Wfff 


THE  NEW  MACHIAVELLJ 


MR.  WELLS  HAS  ALSO  WRITTEN 

The  following  NOVELS  : 

LOVE   AND  MR.  LEWISUAM 

KIPPS  MR.  POLLY 

ANN  VERONICA  and  TONO  BCNGAY 

Numerous  short  stories  to  be  collected 

presently  in  one  volume. 
The  following  fantastic  and  imaginative 
ROMANCES  : 

THE  TIME  MACHINE 

THE  WAR  OF  THE  WORLDS 

THE  SEA  LADY 

IN  THE  DAYS  OF  THE  COMET 

THE  SLEEPER  AWAKES 

THE  FOOD  OF  THE  GODS 

THE  WAR  IN  THE  AIK 

THE  FIRST  MEN  IN  THB  MOON  and 

THE  ISLAND  OF  DOCTOR  MOREAD 

And  a  scries  of  books  upon  social  and 
political  questions  of  which 

ANTICIPATIONS  (1900) 

A  MODERN  UTOPIA 

FIRST  AND  LAST  THINGS  (RELIGION  AND 

PHILOSOPHY)  and  NEW  WORLDS  FOB  OLD 
are  the  chief. 


.  THE 
NEW   MACHIAVELLI 


H.  G.  WELLS 

X, 


Author  of  "Tono  Bungky"  "The  History  of 
Mr.  Polly,"  etc. 


"A  closer  examination .  . .  shows  that  Abelard  was  a  Nominalist  under 
a  new  name."   G.  H.  LEWES,  Hist.  Philos. 

"It  suffices  for  our  immediate  purpose  that  tender-minded  and  tough- 
minded  people  ...  do  both  exist."    WILLIAM  JAMES,  Pragmatism. 


NEW  YORK 
DUFFIELD  &  COMPANY 

1921 


COPYRIGHT,     1910 

DUFFIELD   &  COMPANY 


\B 


CONTENTS 

BOOK    THE    FIRST 

THE  MAKING  OF  A  MAN 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  CONCERNING  A  BOOK  THAT  WAS  NEVER  WRITTEN     .         3 

II.  BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER 12 

III.  SCHOLASTIC 46 

IV.  ADOLESCENCE  .  .  87 


BOOK   THE   SECOND 

MARGARET 

I.  MARGARET  IN   STAFFORDSHIRE        .     .     ,;    :,,    -..     ,     .  151 

II.  MARGARET  IN  LONDON        .      .........  185 

III.  MARGARET   IN    VENICE        .     .     ...     .     .     .     .  225 

IV.  THE  HOUSE  IN  WESTMINSTER     .     .     ;.;     ...     ...  233 

BOOK   THE    THIRD 
THE  HEART  OF  POLITIC* 

I.  THE  RIDDLE  FOB  THE  STATESMAN     .     .     «    •    ••  .  969 

II.  SEEKING  ASSOCIATES .  311 

III.  SECESSION »     .  .  353 

IV.  THE  BESETTING  OF  SEX     .;„....     .     ,.  .  370 

BOOK   THE   FOURTH 
ISABEL 

I.  LOVE   AND   SUCCESS •    ,.     .     .          389 

II.  THE   IMPOSSIBLE   POSITION 419 

III.  THE  BREAKING  POINT  453 


BOOK   THE    FIRST 
THE    MAKING   OF   A   MAN 


THE 
NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

CHAPTER   THE  FIRST    . 

CONCERNING    A    BOOK    THAT    WAS    NEVER, 
WRITTEN 

.     §  1 

SINCE  I  came  to  this  place  I  have  been  very  restless, 
wasting  my  energies  in  the  futile  beginning  of  ill-con- 
ceived books.  One  does  not  settle  down  very  readily 
at  two  and  forty  to  a  new  way  of  living,  and  I  have 
found  myself  with  the  teeming  interests  of  the  life  I 
have  abandoned  still  buzzing  like  a  swarm  of  homeless 
bees  in  my  head.  My  mind  has  been  full  of  confused 
protests  and  justifications.  In  any  case  I  should  have 
found  difficulties  enough  in  expressing  the  complex 
thing  I  have  to  tell,  but  it  has  added  greatly  to  my 
trouble  that  I  have  a  great  analogue,  that  a  certain 
Niccolo  Machiavelli  chanced  to  fall  out  of  politics  at 
very  much  the  age  I  have  reached,  and  wrote  a  book 
to  engage  the  restlessness  of  his  mind,  very  much  as  I 
have  wanted  to  do.  He  wrote  about  the  relation  of 
the  great  constructive  spirit  in  politics  to  individual 
character  and  weaknesses,  and  so  far  his  achievement 
lies  like  a  deep  rut  in  the  road  of  my  intention.  It 
has  taken  me  far  astray.  It  is  a  matter  of  many  weeks 
now — diversified  indeed  by  some  long  drives  into  the 
mountains  behind  us  and  a  memorable  sail  to  Genoa 
across  the  blue  and  purple  waters  that  drowned  Shelley 


4          THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

— since  I  began  a  laboured  and  futile  imitation  of  "  The 
Prince."  I  sat  up  late  last  night  with  the  jumbled 
accumulation;  and  at  last  made  a  little  fire  of  olive 
twigs  and  burnt  it  all,  sheet  by  sheet — to  begin  again 
clear  this  morning. 

But  incidentally  I  have  re-read  most  of  Machiavelli, 
not  excepting  those  scandalous  letters  of  his  to  Vettori, 
and  it  seems  to  me,  now  that  I  have  released  myself 
altogether,  .ft-oin  his  literary  precedent,  that  he  still  has 
his  toe-  for  me.  In  spite  of  his  vast  prestige  I  claim 
Hridrad  with-  him  and  set  his  name  upon  my  title-page, 
in  partial  -intimation  of  the  matter  of  my  story.  He 
takes  me  with  sympathy  not  only  by  reason  of  the 
dream  he  pursued  and  the  humanity  of  his  politics,  but 
by  the  mixture  of  his  nature.  His  vices  come  in, 
essential  to  my  issue.  He  is  dead  and  gone,  all  his 
immediate  correlations  to  party  and  faction  have  faded 
to  insignificance,  leaving  only  on  the  one  hand  his 
broad  method  and  conceptions,  and  upon  the  other  his 
intimate  living  personality,  exposed  down  to  its  salacious 
corners  as  the  soul  of  no  contemporary  can  ever  be 
exposed.  Of  those  double  strands  it  is  I  have  to  write, 
of  the  subtle  protesting  perplexing  play  of  instinctive 
passion  and  desire  against  too  abstract  a  dream  of 
statesmanship.  But  things  that  seemed  to  lie  very 
far  apart  in  Machiavelli's  time  have  come  near  to 
one  another;  it  is  no  simple  story  of  white  passions 
struggling  against  the  red  that  I  have  to  tell. 

The  state-making  dream  is  a  very  old  dream  indeed 
in  the  world's  history.  It  plays  too  small  a  part  in 
novels.  Plato  and  Confucius  are  but  the  highest  of  a 
great  host  of  minds  that  have  had  a  kindred  aspiration, 
have  dreamt  of  a  world  of  men  better  ordered,  happier, 
finer,  securer.  They  imagined  cities  grown  more  power- 
ful and  peoples  made  rich  and  multitudinous  by  their 
efforts,  they  thought  in  terms  of  harbours  and  shining 


CONCERNING  A  BOOK  5 

navies,  great  roads  engineered  marvellously,  jungles 
cleared  and  deserts  conquered,  the  ending  of  muddle 
and  diseases  and  dirt  and  misery;  the  ending  of  con- 
fusions that  waste  human  possibilities;  they  thought 
of  these  things  with  passion  and  desire  as  other  men 
think  of  the  soft  lines  and  tender  beauty  of  women. 
Thousands  of  men  there  are  to-day  almost  mastered  by 
this  white  passion  of  statecraft,  and  in  nearly  every 
one  who  reads  and  thinks  you  could  find,  I  suspect, 
some  sort  of  answering  response.  But  in  every  one 
it  presents  itself  extraordinarily  entangled  and  mixed 
up  with  other,  more  intimate  things. 

It  was  so  with  Machiavelli.  I  picture  him  at  San 
Casciano  as  he  lived  in  retirement  upon  his  property 
after  the  fall  of  the  Republic,  perhaps  with  a  twinge  of 
the  torture  that  punished  his  conspiracy  still  lurking 
in  his  limbs.  Such  twinges  could  not  stop  his  dream- 
ing. Then  it  was  "  The  Prince  "  was  written.  All  day 
he  went  about  his  personal  affairs,  saw  homely  neigh- 
bours, dealt  with  his  family,  gave  vent  to  everyday 
passions.  He  would  sit  in  the  shop  of  Donate  del 
Corno  gossiping  curiously  among  vicious  company,  or 
pace  the  lonely  woods  of  his  estate,  book  in  hand,  full 
of  bitter  meditations.  In  the  evening  he  returned  home 
and  went  to  his  study.  At  the  entrance,  he  says,  he 
pulled  off  his  peasant  clothes  covered  with  the  dust  and 
dirt  of  that  immediate  life,  washed  himself,  put  on  his 
"noble  court  dress,"  closed  the  door  on  the  world  of 
toiling  and  getting,  private  loving,  private  hating  and 
personal  regrets,  sat  down  with  a  sigh  of  contentment 
to  those  wider  dreams. 

I  like  to  think  of  him  so,  with  brown  books  before 
him  lit  by  the  light  of  candles  in  silver  candlesticks,  or 
heading  some  new  chapter  of  "  The  Prince,"  with  a 
grey  quill  in  his  clean  fine  hand. 

So    writing,    he    becomes    a    symbol    for    me,    and 


6          THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

the  less  none  because  of  his  animal  humour,  his  queer 
indecent  side,  and  because  of  such  lapses  into  utter 
meanness  as  that  which  made  him  sound  the  note  of 
the  begging-letter  writer  even  in  his  "  Dedication," 
reminding  His  Magnificence  very  urgently,  as  if  it  were 
the  gist  of  his  matter,  of  the  continued  malignity  of 
fortune  in  his  affairs.  These  flaws  complete  him. 
They  are  my  reason  for  preferring  him  as  a  symbol  to 
Plato,  of  whose  indelicate  side  we  know  nothing,  and 
whose  correspondence  with  Dionysius  of  Syracuse  has 
perished;  or  to  Confucius  who  travelled  China  in  search 
of  a  Prince  he  might  instruct,  with  lapses  and  indigni- 
ties now  lost  in  the  mists  of  ages.  They  have  achieved 
the  apotheosis  of  individual  forgetfulness,  and  Plato 
has  the  added  glory  of  that  acquired  beauty,  that  bust 
of  the  Indian  Bacchus  which  is  now  indissolubly  mingled 
with  his  tradition.  They  have  passed  into  the  world 
of  the  ideal,  and  every  humbug  takes  his  freedoms  with 
their  names.  But  Machiavelli,  more  recent  and  less 
popular,  is  still  all  human  and  earthly,  a  fallen  brother 
— and  at  the  same  time  that  nobly  dressed  and  nobly 
dreaming  writer  at  the  desk. 

That  vision  of  the  strengthened  and  perfected  state  is 
protagonist  in  my  story.  But  as  I  re-read  "  The  Prince  " 
and  thought  out  the  manner  of  my  now  abandoned 
project,  I  came  to  perceive  how  that  stir  and  whirl  of 
human  thought  one  calls  by  way  of  embodiment  the 
French  Revolution,  has  altered  absolutely  the  approach 
to  such  a  question.  Machiavelli,  like  Plato  and 
Pythagoras  and  Confucius  two  hundred  odd  decades 
before  him,  saw  only  one  method  by  which  a  thinking 
man,  himself  not  powerful,  might  do  the  work  of  state 
building,  and  that  was  by  seizing  the  imagination  of 
a  Prince.  Directly  these  men  turned  their  thoughts 
towards  realisation,  their  attitudes  became — what  shall 
I  call  it? — secretarial.  Machiavelli,  it  is  true,  had  some 


CONCERNING  A  BOOK  7 

little  doubts  about  the  particular  Prince  he  wanted, 
whether  it  was  Caesar  Borgia  of  Giuliano  or  Lorenzo, 
but  a  Prince  it  had  to  be.  Before  I  saw  clearly  the 
differences  of  our  own  time  I  searched  my  mind  for  the 
modern  equivalent  of  a  Prince.  At  various  times  I 
redrafted  a  parallel  dedication  to  the  Prince  of  Wales, 
to  the  Emperor  William,  to  Mr.  Evesham,  to  a  certain 
newspaper  proprietor  who  was  once  my  schoolfellow  at 
City  Merchants',  to  Mr.  J.  D.  Rockefeller— all  of  them 
men  in  their  several  ways  and  circumstances  and  possi- 
bilities, princely.  Yet  in  every  case  my  pen  bent  of  its 
own  accord  towards  irony  because — because,  although 
at  first  I  did  not  realise  it,  I  myself  am  just  as  free  to 
be  a  prince.  The  appeal  was  unfair.  The  old  sort  of 
Prince,  the  old  little  principality  has  vanished  from  the 
world.  The  commonweal  is  one  man's  absolute  estate 
and  responsibility  no  more.  In  Machiavelli's  time  it 
was  indeed  to  an  extreme  degree  one  man's  affair.  But 
the  days  of  the  Prince  who  planned  and  directed  and 
was  the  source  and  centre  of  all  power  are  ended.  We 
are  in  a  condition  of  affairs  infinitely  more  complex,  In 
which  every  prince  and  statesman  is  something  of  a 
servant  and  every  intelligent  human  being  something  of 
a  Prince.  No  magnificent  pensive  Lorenzos  remain  any 
more  in  this  world  for  secretarial  hopes. 

In  a  sense  it  is  wonderful  how  power  has  vanished, 
in  a  sense  wonderful  how  it  has  increased.  I  sit  here, 
an  unarmed  discredited  man,  at  a  small  writing-table 
in  a  little  defenceless  dwelling  among  the  vines,  and  no 
human  being  can  stop  my  pen  except  by  the  deliberate 
self-immolation  of  murdering  me,  nor  destroy  its  fruits 
except  by  theft  and  crime.  No  King,  no  council,  can 
seize  and  torture  me;  no  Church,  no  nation  silence  me. 
Such  powers  of  ruthless  and  complete  suppression  have 
vanished.  But  that  is  not  because  power  has  diminished, 
but  because  it  has  increased  and  become  multitudinous, 


8         THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

because  it  has  dispersed  itself  and  specialised.  It  is  no 
longer  a  negative  power  we  have,  but  positive;  we 
cannot  prevent,  but  we  can  do.  This  age,  far  beyond 
all  previous  ages,  is  full  of  powerful  men,  men  who 
might,  if  they  had  the  will  for  it,  achieve  stupendous 
things.  ^) 

The  things  that  might  be  done  to-day!  The  things 
indeed  that  are  being  done!  It  is  the  latter  that  give 
one  so  vast  a  sense  of  the  former.  When  I  think  of  the 
progress  of  physical  and  mechanical  science,  of  medicine 
and  sanitation  during  the  last  century,  when  I  measure 
the  increase  in  general  education  and  average  efficiency, 
the  power  now  available  for  human  service,  the  merely 
physical  increment,  and  compare  it  with  anything  that 
has  ever  been  at  man's  disposal  before,  and  when  I  think 
of  what  a  little  straggling,  incidental,  undisciplined  and 
uncoordinated  minority  of  inventors,  experimenters, 
educators,  writers  and  organisers  has  achieved  this  de- 
velopment of  human  possibilities,  achieved  it  in  spite 
of  the  disregard  and  aimlessness  of  the  huge  majority, 
and  the  passionate  resistance  of  the  active  dull,  my 
imagination  grows  giddy  with  dazzling  intimations 
of  the  human  splendours  the  justly  organised  state 
may  yet  attain.  I  glimpse  for  a  bewildering  instant 
the  heights  that  may  be  scaled,  the  splendid  enter- 
prises made  possible.  .  .  . 

But  the  appeal  goes  out  now  in  other  forms,  in  a 
book  that  catches  at  thousands  of  readers  for  the  eye 
/of  a  Prince  diffused.  It  is  the  old  appeal  indeed  for 
the  unification  of  human  effort,  the  ending  of  confu- 
sions, but  instead  of  the  Machiavellian  deference  to  a 
flattered  lord,  a  man  cries  out  of  his  heart  to  the  un- 
seen fellowship  about  him.  The  last  written  dedication 
of  all  those  I  burnt  last  night,  was  to  no  single  man, 
but  to  the  socially  constructive  passion — in  any 
man.  .  . 


CONCERNING  A  BOOK  9 

There  is,  moreover,  a  second  great  difference  in  kind 
between  my  world  and  Machiavelli's.  We  are  dis- 
covering women.  It  is  as  if  they  had  come  across  a 
vast  interval  since  his  time,  into  the  very  chamber  of  the 
statesman. 

§  2 

In  Machiavelli's  outlook  the  interest  of  womanhood 
was  in  a  region  of  life  almost  infinitely  remote  from  his 
statecraft.  They  were  the  vehicle  of  children,  but  only 
Imperial  Rome  and  the  new  world  of  to-day  have  ever 
had  an  inkling  of  the  significance  that  might  give  them 
in  the  state.  They  did  their  work,  he  thought,  as  the 
ploughed  earth  bears  its  crops.  Apart  from  their 
function  of  fertility  they  gave  a  humorous  twist  to 
life,  stimulated  worthy  men  to  toil,  and  wasted  the 
hours  of  Princes.  He  left  the  thought  of  women  out- 
side with  his  other  dusty  things  when  he  went  into  his 
study  to  write,  dismissed  them  from  his  mind.  But  our 
modern  world  is  burthened  with  its  sense  of  the  immense, 
now  half  articulate,  significance  of  women.  They  stand 
now,  as  it  were,  close  beside  the  silver  candlesticks, 
speaking  as  Machiavelli  writes,  until  he  stays  his  per. 
and  turns  to  discuss  his  writing  with  them. 

It  is  this  gradual  discovery  of  sex  as  a  thing  col- 
lectively portentous  that  I  have  to  mingle  with  my 
statecraft  if  my  picture  is  to  be  true,  which  has  turned 
me  at  length  from  a  treatise  to  the  telling  of  my  own 
story.  In  my  life  I  have  paralleled  very  closely  the 
slow  realisations  that  are  going  on  in  the  world  about 
me.  I  began  life  ignoring  women,  they  came  to  me  at 
first  perplexing  and  dishonouring;  only  very  slowly 
and  very  late  in  my  life  and  after  misadventure,  did  I 
gauge  the  power  and  beauty  of  the  love  of  man  and 
woman  and  learn  how  it  must  needs  frame  a  justifi- 
able vision  of  the  ordered  world.  Love  has  brought 
me  to  disaster,  because  my  career  had  been  planned 


10        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

regardless  of  its  possibility  and  value.  But  Machiavelli, 
it  seems  to  me,  when  he  went  into  his  study,  left  not 
only  the  earth  of  life  outside  but  its  unsuspected 
soul.  .  .  . 

§   3 

Like  Machiavelli  at  San  Casciano,  if  I  may  take 
this  analogy  one  step  further,  I  too  am  an  exile.  Office 
and  leading  are  closed  to  me.  The  political  career  that 
promised  so  much  for  me  is  shattered  and  ended  for 
ever. 

I  look  out  from  this  vine-wreathed  veranda  under 
the  branches  of  a  stone  pine;  I  see  wide  and  far  across 
a  purple  valley  whose  sides  are  terraced  and  set  with 
houses  of  pink  and  ivory,  the  Gulf  of  Liguria  gleam- 
ing sapphire  blue,  and  cloud-like  baseless  mountains 
hanging  in  the  sky,  and  I  think  of  lank  and  coaly 
steamships  heaving  on  the  grey  rollers  of  the  English 
Channel  and  darkling  streets  wet  with  rain,  I  recall  as 
if  I  were  back  there  the  busy  exit  from  Charing  Cross, 
the  cross  and  the  money-changers'  offices,  the  splendid 
grime  of  giant  London  and  the  crowds  going  perpetu- 
ally to  and  fro,  the  lights  by  night  and  the  urgency 
and  eventfulness  of  that  great  rain-swept  heart  of  the 
modern  world. 

It  is  difficult  to  think  we  have  left  that — for  many 
years  if  not  for  ever.  In  thought  I  walk  once  more  in 
Palace  Yard  and  hear  the  clink  and  clatter  of  hansoms 
and  the  quick  quiet  whirr  of  motors;  I  go  in  vivid 
recent  memories  through  the  stir  in  the  lobbies,  I  sit 
again  at  eventful  dinners  in  those  old  dining-rooms 
like  cellars  below  the  House — dinners  that  ended  with 
shrill  division  bells,  I  think  of  huge  clubs  swarming  and 
excited  by  the  bulletins  of  that  electoral  battle  that 
was  for  me  the  opening  opportunity.  I  see  the 
stencilled  names  and  numbers  go  up  on  the  green  baize, 


CONCERNING  A  BOOK         11 

constituency  after  constituency,  amidst  murmurs  or  loud 
shouting.  .  .  . 

It  is  over  for  me  now  and  vanished.  That  oppor- 
tunity will  come  no  more.  Very  probably  you  have 
heard  already  some  crude  inaccurate  version  of  our 
story  and  why  I  did  not  take  office,  and  have  formed 
your  partial  judgment  on  me.  And  so  it  is  I  sit 
now  at  my  stone  table,  half  out  of  life  already,  in  a 
warm,  large,  shadowy  leisure,  splashed  with  sunlight 
and  hung  with  vine  tendrils,  with  paper  before  me  to 
distil  such  wisdom  as  I  can,  as  Machiavelli  in  his  exile 
sought  to  do,  from  the  things  I  have  learnt  and  felt 
during  the  career  that  has  ended  now  in  my  divorce. 

I  climbed  high  and  fast  from  small  beginnings.  I 
had  the  mind  of  my  party.  I  do  not  know  where  I 
might  not  have  ended,  but  for  this  red  blaze  that  came 
out  of  my  unguarded  nature  and  closed  my  career  for 
ever. 


CHAPTER    THE    SECOND 

BROMSTEAD   AND   MY   FATHER 


I  DREAMT  first  of  states  and  cities  and  political  things 
when  I  was  a  little  boy  in  knickerbockers. 

When  I  think  of  how  such  things  began  in  rpy 
mind,  there  comes  back  to  me  the  memory  of  an 
enormous  bleak  room  with  its  ceiling  going  up  to  heaven 
and  its  floor  covered  irregularly  with  patched  and 
defective  oilcloth  and  a  dingy  mat  or  so  and  a 
"surround"  as  they  call  it,  of  dark  stained  wood. 
Here  and  there  against  the  wall  are  trunks  and  boxes. 
There  are  cupboards  on  either  side  of  the  fireplace  and 
bookshelves  with  books  above  them,  and  on  the  wall 
and  rather  tattered  is  a  large  yellow-varnished  geological 
map  of  the  South  of  England.  Over  the  mantel  is  a 
huge  lump  of  white  coral  rock  and  several  big  fossil 
bones,  and  above  that  hangs  the  portrait  of  a  brainy 
gentleman,  sliced  in  half  and  displaying  an  interior  of 
intricate  detail  and  much  vigour  of  coloring.  It  is 
the  floor  I  think  of  chiefly;  over  the  oilcloth  of  which, 
assumed  to  be  land,  spread  towns  and  villages  and 
forts  of  wooden  bricks;  there  are  steep  square  hills 
(geologically,  volumes  of  Orr's  Cyclopaedia  of  the 
Sciences)  and  the  cracks  and  spaces  of  the  floor  and  the 
bare  brown  surround  were  the  water  channels  and  open 
sea  of  that  continent  of  mine. 

I  still  remember  with  infinite  gratitude  the  great- 
uncle  to  whom  I  owe  my  bricks.  He  must  have  been 
one  of  those  rare  adults  who  have  not  forgotten  the 

1* 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    13 

chagrins  and  dreams  of  childhood.  He  was  a  prosperous 
west  of  England  builder;  including  my  father  he  had 
three  nephews,  and  for  each  of  them  he  caused  a  box  of 
bricks  to  be  made  by  an  out-of-work  carpenter,  not  the 
insufficient  supply  of  the  toyshop,  you  understand,  but  a 
really  adequate  quantity  of  bricks  made  out  of  oak  and 
shaped  and  smoothed,  bricks  about  five  inches  by  two 
and  a  half  by  one,  and  half -bricks  and  quarter-bricks 
to  correspond.  There  were  hundreds  of  them,  many 
hundreds.  I  could  build  six  towers  as  high  as  myself 
with  them,  and  there  seemed  quite  enough  for  every 
engineering  project  I  could  undertake.  I  could  build 
whole  towns  with  streets  and  houses  and  churches  and 
citadels;  I  could  bridge  every  gap  in  the  oilcloth  and 
make  causeways  over  crumpled  spaces  (which  I 
feigned  to  be  morasses),  and  on  a  keel  of  whole  bricks 
it  was  possible  to  construct  ships  to  push  over  the  high 
seas  to  the  remotest  port  in  the  room.  And  a  dis- 
ciplined population,  that  rose  at  last  by  sedulous 
begging  on  birthdays  and  all  convenient  occasions  to 
well  over  two  hundred,  of  lead  sailors  and  soldiers, 
horse,  foot  and  artillery,  inhabited  this  world. 

Justice  has  never  been  done  to  bricks  and  soldiers 
by  those  who  write  about  toys.  The  praises  of  the 
toy  theatre  have  been  a  common  theme  for  essayists, 
the  planning  of  the  scenes,  the  painting  and  cutting 
out  of  the  caste,  penny  plain  twopence  coloured,  the 
stink  and  glory  of  the  performance  and  the  final  con- 
flagration. I  had  such  a  theatre  once,  but  I  never 
loved  it  nor  hoped  for  much  from  it;  my  bricks  and 
soldiers  were  my  perpetual  drama.  I  recall  an  in- 
cessant variety  of  interests.  There  was  the  mystery 
and  charm  of  the  complicated  buildings  one  could 
make,  with  long  passages  and  steps  and  windows 
through  which  one  peeped  into  their  intricacies,  and 
by  means  of  slips  of  card  one  could  make  slanting  way* 


14        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

in  them,  and  send  marbles  rolling  from  top  to  base 
and  thence  out  into  the  hold  of  a  waiting  ship.  Then 
there  were  the  fortresses  and  gun  emplacements  and 
covered  ways  in  which  one's  soldiers  went.  And  there 
was  commerce;  the  shops  and  markets  and  store-rooms 
full  of  nasturtium  seed,  thrift  seed,  lupin  beans  and 
suchlike  provender  from  the  garden;  such  stuff  one 
stored  in  match-boxes  and  pill-boxes,  or  packed  in 
sacks  of  old  glove  fingers  tied  up  with  thread  and  sent 
off  by  waggons  along  the  great  military  road  to  the 
beleaguered  fortress  on  the  Indian  frontier  beyond  the 
worn  places  that  were  dismal  swamps.  And  there  were 
battles  on  the  way. 

That  great  road  is  still  clear  in  my  memory.  I  was 
given,  I  forget  by  what  benefactor,  certain  particularly 
fierce  red  Indians  of  lead — I  have  never  seen  such 
soldiers  since — and  for  these  my  father  helped  me  to 
make  tepees  of  brown  paper,  and  I  settled  them  in  a 
hitherto  desolate  country  under  the  frowning  nail- 
studded  cliffs  of  an  ancient  trunk.  Then  I  conquered 
them  and  garrisoned  their  land.  (Alas!  they  died,  no 
doubt  through  contact  with  civilisation — one  my  mother 
trod  on — and  their  land  became  a  wilderness  again  and 
was  ravaged  for  a  time  by  a  clockwork  crocodile  of  vast 
proportions.)  And  out  towards  the  coal-scuttle  was 
a  region  near  the  impassable  thickets  of  the  ragged 
hearthrug  where  lived  certain  china  Zulus  brandishing 
spears,  and  a  mountain  country  of  rudely  piled  bricks 
concealing  the  most  devious  and  enchanting  caves  and 
several  mines  of  gold  and  silver  paper.  Among  these 
rocks  a  number  of  survivors  from  a  Noah's  Ark  made 
a  various,  dangerous,  albeit  frequently  invalid  and 
crippled  fauna,  and  I  was  wont  to  increase  the  un- 
cultivated wildness  of  this  region  further  by  trees  of 
privet-twigs  from  the  garden  hedge  and  box  from  the 
garden  borders.  By  these  territories  went  my  Imperial 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    15 

Road  carrying  produce  to  and  fro,  bridging  gaps  in 
the  oilcloth,  tunnelling  through  Encyclopaedic  hills — 
one  tunnel  was  three  volumes  long — defended  as  occa- 
sion required  by  camps  of  paper  tents  or  brick  block- 
houses, and  ending  at  last  in  a  magnificently  engineered 
ascent  to  a  fortress  on  the  cliffs  commanding  the  Indian 
reservation. 

My  games  upon  the  floor  must  have  spread  over 
several  years  and  developed  from  small  beginnings, 
incorporating  now  this  suggestion  and  now  that.  They 
stretch,  I  suppose,  from  seven  to  eleven  or  twelve.  I 
played  them  intermittently,  and  they  bulk  now  in  the 
retrospect  far  more  significantly  than  they  did  at  the 
time.  I  played  them  in  bursts,  and  then  forgot  them 
for  long  periods;  through  the  spring  and  summer  I 
was  mostly  out  of  doors,  and  school  and  classes  caught 
me  early.  And  in  the  retrospect  I  see  them  all  not 
only  magnified  and  transfigured,  but  fore-shortened 
and  confused  together.  A  clockwork  railway,  I  seem 
to  remember,  came  and  went;  one  or  two  clockwork 
boats,  toy  sailing  ships  that,  being  keeled,  would  do 
nothing  but  lie  on  their  beam  ends  on  the  floor;  a 
detestable  lot  of  cavalrymen,  undersized  and  gilt  all 
over,  given  me  by  a  maiden  aunt,  and  very  much  what 
one  might  expect  from  an  aunt,  that  I  used  as  Nero 
used  his  Christians  to  ornament  my  public  buildings; 
and  I  finally  melted  some  into  fratricidal  bullets,  and 
therewith  blew  the  rest  to  flat  splashes  of  lead  by 
means  of  a  brass  cannon  in  the  garden. 

I  find  this  empire  of  the  floor  much  more  vivid  and 
detailed  in  my  memory  now  than  many  of  the  owners 
of  the  skirts  and  legs  and  boots  that  went  gingerly 
across  its  territories.  Occasionally,  alas !  they  stooped 
to  scrub,  abolishing  in  one  universal  destruction  the 
slow  growth  of  whole  days  of  civilised  development. 
I  still  remember  the  hatred  and  disgust  of  these 


16        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

catastrophes.  Like  Noah  I  was  given  warnings.  Did 
I  disregard  them,  coarse  red  hands  would  descend, 
plucking  garrisons  from  fortresses  and  sailors  from 
ships,  jumbling  them  up  in  their  wrong  boxes,  clumsily 
so  that  their  rifles  and  swords  were  broken,  sweeping 
the  splendid  curves  of  the  Imperial  Road  into  heaps 
of  ruins,  casting  the  jungle  growth  of  Zululand  into 
the  fire. 

"  Well,  Master  Dick,"  the  voice  of  this  cosmic 
calamity  would  say,  "you  ought  to  have  put  them 
away  last  night.  No!  I  can't  wait  until  you've  sailed 
them  all  away  in  ships.  I  got  my  work  to  do,  and  do 
it  I  will." 

And  in  no  time  all  my  continents  and  lands  were 
swirling  water  and  swiping  strokes  of  house-flannel. 

That  was  the  worst  of  my  giant  visitants,  but  my 
mother  too,  dear  lady,  was  something  of  a  terror  to 
this  microcosm.  She  wore  spring-sided  boots,  a  kind 
of  boot  now  vanished,  I  believe,  from  the  world,  with 
dull  bodies  and  shiny  toes,  and  a  silk  dress  with  flounces 
that  were  very  destructive  to  the  more  hazardous 
viaducts  of  the  Imperial  Road.  She  was  always,  I 
seem  to  remember,  fetching  me ;  fetching  me  for  a  meal, 
fetching  me  for  a  walk  or,  detestable  absurdity!  fetch- 
ing me  for  a  wash  and  brush  up,  and  she  never  seemed 
to  understand  anything  whatever  of  the  political 
systems  across  which  she  came  to  me.  Also  she  forbade 
all  toys  on  Sundays  except  the  bricks  for  church- 
building  and  the  soldiers  for  church  parade,  or  a 
Scriptural  use  of  the  remains  of  the  Noah's  Ark  mixed 
top  with  a  wooden  Swiss  dairy  farm.  But  she  really 
did  not  know  whether  a  thing  was  a  church  or  not 
unless  it  positively  bristled  with  cannon,  and  many  a 
Sunday  afternoon  have  I  played  Chicago  (with  the  fear 
of  God  in  my  heart)  under  an  infidel  pretence  that  it 
was  a  new  sort  of  ark  rather  elaborately  done. 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    17 

Chicago,  I  must  explain,  was  based  upon  my 
father's  description  of  the  pig  slaughterings  in  that 
city  and  certain  pictures  I  had  seen.  You  made  your 
beasts — which  were  all  the  ark  lot  really,  provisionally 
conceived  as  pigs — go  up  elaborate  approaches  to  a 
central  pen,  from  which  they  went  down  a  cardboard 
slide  four  at  a  time,  and  dropped  most  satis fyingly 
down  a  brick  shaft,  and  pitter-litter  over  some  steep 
steps  to  where  a  head  slaughterman  (ne  Noah)  strung 
a  cotton  loop  round  their  legs  and  sent  them  by  pin 
hooks  along  a  wire  to  a  second  slaughterman  with  a 
chipped  foot  (formerly  Mrs.  Noah)  who,  if  I  remember 
rightly,  converted  them  into  Army  sausage  by  means 
of  a  portion  of  the  inside  of  an  old  alarum  clock. 

My  mother  did  not  understand  my  games,  but  my 
father  did.  He  wore  bright-coloured  socks  and  carpet 
slippers  when  he  was  indoors — my  mother  disliked 
boots  in  the  house — and  he  would  sit  down  on  my 
little  chair  and  survey  the  microcosm  on  the  floor  with 
admirable  understanding  and  sympathy. 

It  was  he  gave  me  most  of  my  toys  and,  I  more  than 
suspect,  most  of  my  ideas.  "  Here's  some  corrugated 
iron,"  he  would  say,  "  suitable  for  roofs  and  fencing," 
and  hand  me  a  lump  of  that  stiff  crinkled  paper  that 
is  used  for  packing  medicine  bottles.  Or,  "  Dick,  do 
you  see  the  tiger  loose  near  the  Imperial  Road? — won't 
do  for  your  cattle  ranch."  And  I  would  find  a  bright 
new  lead  tiger  like  a  special  creation  at  large  in  the 
world,  and  demanding  a  hunting  expedition  and  much 
elaborate  effort  to  get  him  safely  housed  in  the  city 
menagerie  beside  the  captured  dragon  crocodile,  tamed 
now,  and  his  key  lost  and  the  heart  and  spring  gone 
out  of  him. 

And  to  the  various  irregular  reading  of  my  father 
I  owe  the  inestimable  blessing  of  never  having  a  boy's 
book  in  my  boyhood  except  those  of  Jules  Verne.  But 


18        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

my  father  used  to  get  books  for  himself  and  me  from 
the  Bromstead  Institute,  Fenimore  Cooper  and  Mayne 
Reid  and  illustrated  histories;  one  of  the  Russo- 
Turkish  war  and  one  of  Napier's  expedition  to 
Abyssinia  I  read  from  end  to  end;  Stanley  and 
Livingstone,  lives  of  Wellington,  Napoleon  and  Gari- 
baldi, and  back  volumes  of  Punch,  from  which  I 
derived  conceptions  of  foreign  and  domestic  politics 
it  has  taken  years  of  adult  reflection  to  correct.  And 
at  home  permanently  we  had  Wood's  Natural  History, 
a  brand-new  illustrated  Green's  History  of  the  English 
People,  Irving's  Companions  of  Columbus,  a  great  num- 
ber of  unbound  parts  of  some  geographical  work,  a 
Voyage  Round  the  World  I  think  it  was  called,  with 
pictures  of  foreign  places,  and  Clarke's  New  Testament 
with  a  map  of  Palestine,  and  a  variety  of  other 
informing  books  bought  at  sales.  There  was  a 
Sowerby's  Botany  also,  with  thousands  of  carefully 
tinted  pictures  of  British  plants,  and  one  or  two 
other  important  works  in  the  sitting-room.  I  was 
allowed  to  turn  these  over  and  even  lie  on  the 
floor  with  them  on  Sundays  and  other  occasions  of 
exceptional  cleanliness. 

And  in  the  attic  I  found  one  day  a  very  old 
forgotten  map  after  the  fashion  of  a  bird's-eye  view, 
representing  the  Crimea,  that  fascinated  me  and  kept 
me  for  hours  navigating  its  waters  with  a  pin. 

§   2 

My  father  was  a  lank-limbed  man  in  easy  shabby 
tweed  clothes  and  with  his  hands  in  his  trouser 
pockets.  He  was  a  science  teacher,  taking  a  number 
of  classes  at  the  Bromstead  Institute  in  Kent  under 
the  old  Science  and  Art  Department,  and  "  visiting " 
various  schools;  and  our  resources  were  eked  out  by 


BKOMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    19 

my  mother's  income  of  nearly  a  hundred  pounds  a 
year,  and  by  his  inheritance  of  a  terrace  of  three  pala- 
tial but  structurally  unsound  stucco  houses  near  Brom- 
stead  Station. 

They  were  big  clumsy  residences  in  the  earliest 
Victorian  style,  interminably  high  and  with  deep 
damp  basements  and  downstairs  coal-cellars  and 
kitchens  that  suggested  an  architect  vindictively 
devoted  to  the  discomfort  of  the  servant  class.  If 
so,  he  had  overreached  himself  and  defeated  his  end, 
for  no  servant  would  stay  in  them  unless  for 
exceptional  wages  or  exceptional  tolerance  of  in- 
efficiency or  exceptional  freedom  in  repartee.  Every 
storey  in  the  house  was  from  twelve  to  fifteen  feet 
high  (which  would  have  been  cool  and  pleasant  in  a 
hot  climate),  and  the  stairs  w6nt  steeply  up,  to  end 
at  last  in  attics  too  inaccessible  for  occupation.  The 
ceilings  had  vast  plaster  cornices  of  classical  design, 
fragments  of  which  would  sometimes  fall  unexpectedly, 
and  the  wall-papers  were  bold  and  gigantic  in  pattern 
and  much  variegated  by  damp  and  ill-mended  rents. 

As  my  father  was  quite  unable  to  let  more  than 
one  of  these  houses  at  a  time,  and  that  for  the  most 
part  to  eccentric  and  undesirable  tenants,  he  thought 
it  politic  to  live  in  one  of  the  two  others,  and  devote 
the  rent  he  received  from  the  let  one,  when  it  was 
let,  to  the  incessant  necessary  repairing  of  all  three. 
He  also  did  some  of  the  repairing  himself  and,  smoking 
a  bull-dog  pipe  the  while,  which  my  mother  would  not 
allow  him  to  do  in  the  house,  he  cultivated  vegetables 
in  a  sketchy,  unpunctual  and  not  always  successful 
manner  in  the  unoccupied  gardens.  The  three  houses 
faced  north,  and  the  back  of  the  one  we  occupied  was 
covered  by  a  grape-vine  that  yielded,  I  remember,  small 
green  grapes  for  pies  in  the  spring,  and  imperfectly 
ripe  black  grapes  in  favourable  autumns  for  the  pur- 


20        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

poses  of  dessert.  The  grape-vine  played  an  important 
part  in  my  life,  for  my  father  broke  his  neck  while  he 
was  pruning  it,  when  I  was  thirteen. 

/Mv  father  was  what  is  called  a  man  of  ideas,  but 
they  were  not  always  good  ideas.  My  grandfather  had 
^been  a  private  schoolmaster  and  one  of  the  founders  of 
the  College  of  Preceptors,  and  my  father  had  assisted 
him  in  his  school  until  increasing  competition  and 
diminishing  attendance  had  made  it  evident  that  the 
days  of  small  private  schools  kept  by  unqualified  persons 
were  numbered.  Thereupon  my  father  had  roused  him- 
self and  had  qualified  as  a  science  teacher  under  the 
Science  and  Art  Department,  which  in  those  days  had 
charge  of  the  scientific  and  artistic  education  of  the 
mass  of  the  English  population,  and  had  thrown  him- 
self into  science  teaching  and  the  earning  of  govern- 
ment grants  therefor  with  great  if  transitory  zeal  and 
success. 

I  do  not  remember  anything  of  my  father's  earlier 
and  more  energetic  time.  I  was  the  child  of  my 
parents'  middle  years;  they  married  when  my  father 
was  thirty-five  and  my  mother  past  forty,  and  I  saw 
only  the  last  decadent  phase  of  his  educational  career. 

The  Science  and  Art  Department  has  vanished 
altogether  from  the  world,  and  people  are  forgetting  it 
now  with  the  utmost  readiness  and  generosity.  Part 
of  its  substance  and  staff  and  spirit  survive,  more  or 
less  completely  digested  into  the  Board  of  Education. 
...  The  world  does  move  on,  even  in  its  government. 
It  is  wonderful  how  many  of  the  clumsy  and  limited 
governing  bodies  of  my  youth  and  early  manhood  have 
given  place  now  to  more  scientific  and  efficient  machin- 
ery. When  I  was  a  boy,  Bromstead,  which  is  now  a 
borough,  was  ruled  by  a  strange  body  called  a  Local 
Board — it  was  the  Age  of  Boards — and  I  still  remem- 
ber indistinctly  my  father  rejoicing  at  the  breakfast- 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    21 

table  over  the  liberation  of  London  from  the  corrupt 
and  devastating  control  of  a  Metropolitan  Board  of 
Works.  Then  there  were  also  School  Boards;  I  was 
already  practically  in  politics  before  the  London  School 
Board  was  absorbed  by  the  spreading  tentacles  of  the 
London  County  Council. 

It  gives  a  measure  of  the  newness  of  our  modern 
ideas  of  the  State  to  remember  that  the  very  beginnings 
of  public  education  lie  within  my  father's  lifetime,  and 
that  many  most  intelligent  and  patriotic  people  were 
shocked  beyond  measure  at  the  State  doing  anything 
of  the  sort.  When  he  was  born,  totally  illiterate  peo- 
ple who  could  neither  read  a  book  nor  write  more  than 
perhaps  a  clumsy  signature,  were  to  be  found  every- 
where in  England;  and  great  masses  of  the  popula- 
tion were  getting  no  instruction  at  all.  Only  a  few 
schools  flourished  upon  the  patronage  of  exceptional 
parents;  all  over  the  country  the  old  endowed  grammar 
schools  were  to  be  found  sinking  and  dwindling;  many 
of  them  had  closed  altogether.  In  the  new  great  cen- 
tres of  population  multitudes  of  children  were  sweated 
in  the  factories,  darkly  ignorant  and  wretched  and 
the  under-equipped  and  under-staffed  National  and 
British  schools,  supported  by  voluntary  contributions 
and  sectarian  rivalries,  made  an  ineffectual  fight  against 
this  festering  darkness.  It  was  a  condition  of  affairs 
clamouring  for  remedies,  but  there  was  an  immense 
amount  of  indifference  and  prejudice  to  be  overcome 
before  any  remedies  were  possible.  Perhaps  some  day 
some  industrious  and  lucid  historian  will  disentangle  all 
the  muddle  of  impulses  and  antagonisms,  the  com- 
mercialism, utilitarianism,  obstinate  conservatism, 
humanitarian  enthusiasm,  out  of  which  our  present 
educational  organisation  arose.  I  have  long  since 
come  to  believe  it  necessary  that  all  new  social  insti- 
tutions should  be  born  in  confusion,  and  that  at  first 


22         THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

they  should  present  chiefly  crude  and  ridiculous  aspects. 
The  distrust  of  government  in  the  Victorian  days  was 
far  too  great,  and  the  general  intelligence  far  too  low, 
to  permit  the  State  to  go  about  the  new  business  it  was 
taking  up  in  a  businesslike  way,  to  train  teachers,  build 
and  equip  schools,  endow  pedagogic  research,  and  pro- 
vide properly  written  school-books.  These  things  it 
was  felt  must  be  provided  by  individual  and  local  effort, 
and  since  it  was  manifest  that  it  was  individual  and 
local  effort  that  were  in  default,  it  was  reluctantly 
agreed  to  stimulate  them  by  money  payments.  The 
State  set  up  a  machinery  of  examination  both  in  Sci- 
ence and  Art  and  for  the  elementary  schools;  and 
payments,  known  technically  as  grants,  were  made  in 
accordance  with  the  examination  results  attained,  to 
such  schools  as  Providence  might  see  fit  to  send  into 
the  world.  In  this  way  it  was  felt  the  Demand  would 
be  established  that  would,  according  to  the  beliefs  of 
that  time,  inevitably  ensure  the  Supply.  An  industry 
of  "  Grant  earning "  was  created,  and  this  would  give 
education  as  a  necessary  by-product. 

In  the  end  this  belief  was  found  to  need  qualification, 
but  Grant-earning  was  still  in  full  activity  when  I  was 
a  small  boy.  So  far  as  the  Science  and  Art  Department 
and  my  father  are  concerned,  the  task  of  examination 
was  entrusted  to  eminent  scientific  men,  for  the  most  part 
quite  unaccustomed  to  teaching.  You  see,  if  they  also 
were  teaching  similar  classes  to  those  they  examined,  it 
was  feared  that  injustice  might  be  done.  Year  after  year 
these  eminent  persons  set  questions  and  employed  sub- 
ordinates to  read  and  mark  the  increasing  thousands  of 
answers  that  ensued,  and  having  no  doubt  the  national 
ideal  of  fairness  well  developed  in  their  minds,  they 
were  careful  each  year  to  re-read  the  preceding  papers 
before  composing  the  current  one,  in  order  to  see  what 
it  was  usual  to  ask.  As  a  result  of  this,  in  the  course 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    23 

of  a  few  years  the  recurrence  and  permutation  of  ques- 
tions became  almost  calculable,  and  since  the  practical 
object  of  the  teaching  was  to  teach  people  not  science, 
but  how  to  write  answers  to  these  questions,  the  industry 
of  Grant-earning  assumed  a  form  easily  distinguished 
from  any  kind  of  genuine  education  whatever. 

Other  remarkable  compromises  had  also  to  be  made 
with  the  spirit  of  the  age.  The  unfortunate  conflict 
between  Religion  and  Science  prevalent  at  this  time  was 
mitigated,  if  I  remember  rightly,  by  making  graduates 
in  arts  and  priests  in  the  established  church  Science 
Teachers  ex  officio,  and  leaving  local  and  private  enter- 
prise to  provide  schools,  diagrams,  books,  material, 
according  to  the  conceptions  of  efficiency  prevalent  in 
the  district.  Private  enterprise  made  a  particularly 
good  thing  of  the  books,  A  number  of  competing 
firms  of  publishers  sprang  into  existence  specialising 
in  Science  and  Art  Department  work;  they  set  them- 
selves to  produce  text-books  that  should  supply  exactly 
the  quantity  and  quality  of  knowledge  necessary  for 
every  stage  of  each  of  five  and  twenty  subjects  into 
which  desirable  science  was  divided,  and  copies  and 
models  and  instructions  that  should  give  precisely  the 
method  and  gestures  esteemed  as  proficiency  in  art. 
Every  section  of  each  book  was  written  in  the  idiom 
found  to  be  most  satisfactory  to  the  examiners,  and 
test  questions  extracted  from  papers  set  in  former  years 
were  appended  to  every  chapter.  By  means  of  these 
last  the  teacher  was  able  to  train  his  class  to  the  very 
highest  level  of  grant-earning  efficiency,  and  very 
naturally  he  cast  all  other  methods  of  exposition  aside. 
First  he  posed  his  pupils  with  questions  and  then 
dictated  model  replies. 

That  was  my  father's  method  of  instruction.  I 
attended  his  classes  as  an  elementary  grant-earner  from 
the  age  of  ten  until  his  death,  and  it  is  so  I  remem- 


24        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

her  him,  sitting  on  the  edge  of  a  table,  smothering  a 
yawn  occasionally  and  giving  out  the  infallible  formulae 
to  the  industriously  scribbling  class  sitting  in  rows  of 
desks  before  him.  Occasionally  he  would  slide  to  his 
feet  and  go  to  a  blackboard  on  an  easel  and  draw  on 
that  very  slowly  and  deliberately  in  coloured  chalks  a 
diagram  for  the  class  to  copy  in  coloured  pencils,  and 
sometimes  he  would  display  a  specimen  or  arrange  an 
experiment  for  them  to  see.  The  room  in  the  Institute 
in  which  he  taught  was  equipped  with  a  certain  amount 
of  apparatus  prescribed  as  necessary  for  subject  this 
and  subject  that  by  the  Science  and  Art  Department, 
and  this  my  father  would  supplement  with  maps  and 
diagrams  and  drawings  of  his  own. 

But  he  never  really  did  experiments,  except  that  in 
the  class  in  systematic  botany  he  sometimes  made  us  tease 
common  flowers  to  pieces.  He  did  not  do  experiments 
if  he  could  possibly  help  it,  because  in  the  first  place 
they  used  up  time  and  gas  for  the  Bunsen  burner  and 
good  material  in  a  ruinous  fashion,  and  in  the  second 
they  were,  in  his  rather  careless  and  sketchy  hands,  apt 
to  endanger  the  apparatus  of  the  Institute  and  even 
the  lives  of  his  students.  Then  thirdly,  real  experi- 
ments involved  washing  up.  And  moreover  they 
always  turned  out  wrong,  and  sometimes  misled  the 
too  observant  learner  very  seriously  and  opened  de- 
moralising controversies.  Quite  early  in  life  I  ac- 
quired an  almost  ineradicable  sense  of  the  unscientific 
perversity  of  Nature  and  the  impassable  gulf  that  is 
fixed  between  systematic  science  and  elusive  fact.  I 
knew,  for  example,  that  in  science,  whether  it  be  sub- 
ject XII.,  Organic  Chemistry,  or  subject  XVII.,  Animal 
Physiology,  when  you  blow  into  a  glass  of  lime  water 
it  instantly  becomes  cloudy,  and  if  you  continue  to 
iblow  it  clears  again,  whereas  in  truth  you  may  blow 
into  the  stuff  from  the  lime-water  bottle  until  you  are 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    ITS 

crimson  in  the  face  and  painful  under  the  ears,  and  it 
never  becomes  cloudy  at  all.  And  I  knew,  too,  tliat 
in  science  if  you  put  potassium  chlorate  into  a  retort 
and  heat  it  over  a  Bunsen  burner,  oxygen  is  disengaged 
and  may  be  collected  over  water,  whereas  in  re -I1  fcfe 
if  you  do  anything  of  the  sort  the  vecsel  cracks  Trith  a 
loud  report,  the  potassium  chlorate  descends  ciszling 
upon  the  flame,  the  experimenter  says  "  Oh !  Damn !  " 
with  astonishing  heartiness  and  distinctness,  and  a  lady 
student  in  the  back  seats  gets  up  and  leaves  the  room. 

Science  is  the  organised  conquest  of  Nature,  and  I 
can  quite  understand  that  ancient  libertine  refusing  to 
cooperate  in  her  own  undoing.  And  I  can  quite 
understand,  too,  my  father's  preference  for  what  he 
called  an  illustrative  experiment,  which  was  simply  an 
arrangement  of  the  apparatus  in  front  of  the  class  with 
nothing  whatever  by  way  of  material,  and  the  Bunsen 
burner  clean  and  cool,  and  then  a  slow  luminous 
description  of  just  what  you  did  put  in  it  when  you 
were  so  ill-advised  as  to  carry  the  affair  beyond  illus- 
tration, and  just  exactly  what  ought  anyhow  to  happen 
when  you  did.  He  had  considerable  powers  of  vivid 
expression,  so  that  in  this  way  he  could  make  us  see 
all  he  described.  The  class,  freed  from  any  unpleasant 
nervous  tension,  could  draw  this  still  life  without 
flinching,  and  if  any  part  was  too  difficult  to  draw, 
then  my  father  would  produce  a  simplified  version  on 
the  blackboard  to  be  copied  instead.  And  he  would 
also  write  on  the  blackboard  any  exceptionally  difficult 
but  grant-earning  words,  such  as  "  empyreumatic  "  or 
"  botryoidal." 

Some  words  in  constant  use  he  rarely  explained.  I 
remember  once  sticking  up  my  hand  and  asking  him 
in  the  full  flow  of  description,  "  Please,  sir,  what  is 
flocculent  ?  " 

"  The  precipitate  is." 


26        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

"  Yes,  sir,  but  what  does  it  mean  ?  " 

"  Oh  !  flocculent  !  "  said  my  father,  "  floccolent  ! 
Why  -  "  he  extended  his  hand  and  arm  and  twiddled 
his  fingers  for  a  second  in  the  air.  "  Like  that,"  he 
said. 

I  thought  the  explanation  sufficient,  but  he  paused 
for  a  moment  after  giving  it.  "  As  in  a  flock  bed,  you 
know,"  he  added  and  resumed  his  discourse. 


My  father,  I  am  afraid,  carried  a  natural  incom- 
petence in  practical  affairs  to  an  exceptionally  high 
level.  He  combined  practical  incompetence,  practical 
enterprise  and  a  thoroughly  sanguine  temperament,  in 
a  manner  that  I  have  never  seen  paralleled  in  any 
human  being.  He  was  always  trying  to  do  new  things 
in  the  briskest  manner,  under  the  suggestion  of  books 
or  papers  or  his  own  spontaneous  imagination,  and  as 
he  had  never  been  trained  to  do  anything  whatever  in 
his  life  properly,  his  futilities  were  extensive  and 
thorough.  At  one  time  he  nearly  gave  up  his  classes 
for  intensive  culture,  so  enamoured  was  he  of  its  possi- 
bilities; the  peculiar  pungency  of  the  manure  he  got, 
in  pursuit  of  a  chemical  theory  of  his  own,  has  scarred 
my  olfactory  memories  for  a  lifetime.  The  intensive 
culture  phase  is  very  clear  in  my  memory;  it  came 
near  the  end  of  his  career  and  when  I  was  between 
eleven  and  twelve.  I  was  mobilised  to  gather  cater- 
pillars on  several  occasions,  and  assisted  in  nocturnal 
raids  upon  the  slugs  by  lantern-light  that  wrecked  my 
preparation  work  for  school  next  day.  My  father  dug 
up  both  lawns,  and  trenched  and  manured  in  spasms  of 
immense  vigour  alternating  with  periods  of  paralysing 
distaste  for  the  garden.  And  for  weeks  he  talked 
about  eight  hundred  pounds  an  acre  at  every  meal. 

A   garden,   even     when    it   is     not    exasperated    by 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    27 

intensive  methods,  is  a  thing  as  exacting  as  a  baby, 
its  moods  have  to  be  watched;  it  does  not  wait  upon 
the  cultivator's  convenience,  but  has  times  of  its  own. 
Intensive  culture  greatly  increases  this  disposition  to 
trouble  mankind;  it  makes  a  garden  touchy  and 
hysterical,  a  drugged  and  demoralised  and  over- 
irritated  garden.  My  father  got  at  cross  purposes  with 
our  two  patches  at  an  early  stage.  Everything  grew 
wrong  from  the  first  to  last,  and  if  my  father's  manures 
intensified  nothing  else,  they  certainly  intensified  the 
Primordial  Curse.  The  peas  were  eaten  in  the  night 
before  they  were  three  inches  high,  the  beans  bore 
nothing  but  blight,  the  only  apparent  result  of  a 
spraying  of  the  potatoes  was  to  develop  a  penchant  in 
the  cat  for  being  ill  indoors,  the  cucumber  frames  were 
damaged  by  the  catapulting  of  boys  going  down  the 
lane  at  the  back,  and  all  your  cucumbers  were  mysteri- 
ously embittered.  That  lane  with  its  occasional  passers- 
by  did  much  to  wreck  the  intensive  scheme,  because  my 
father  always  stopped  work  and  went  indoors  if  any 
one  watched  him.  His  special  manure  was  apt  to 
arouse  a  troublesome  spirit  of  inquiry  in  hardy  natures. 
In  digging  his  rows  and  shaping  his  patches  he 
neglected  the  guiding  string  and  trusted  to  his  eye 
altogether  too  much,  and  the  consequent  obliquity  and 
the  various  wind-breaks  and  scare-crows  he  erected, 
and  particularly  an  irrigation  contrivance  he  began 
and  never  finished  by  which  everything  was  to  be 
watered  at  once  by  means  of  pieces  of  gutter  from  the 
roof  and  outhouses  of  Number  2,  and  a  large  and 
particularly  obstinate  clump  of  elder-bushes  in  the 
abolished  hedge  that  he  had  failed  to  destroy  entirely 
either  by  axe  or  by  fire,  combined  to  give  the  gardens 
under  intensive  culture  a  singularly  desolate  and  dis- 
orderly appearance.  He  took  steps  towards  the  diver- 
sion of  our  house  drain  under  the  influence  of  the 


28        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

Sewage  Utilisation  Society;  tut  happily  he  stopped  in 
time.  He  hardly  completed  any  of  the  operations  he 
began;  something  else  became  more  urgent  or  simply 
he  tired;  a  considerable  area  of  the  Number  2  territory 
was  never  even  dug  up. 

In  the  end  the  affair  irritated  him  beyond  endurance. 
Never  was  a  man  less  horticulturally-minded.  The 
clamour  of  these  vegetables  he  had  launched  into  the 
world  for  his  service  and  assistance,  wore  out  his 
patience.  He  would  walk  into  the  garden  the  happiest 
of  men  after  a  day  or  so  of  disregard,  talking  to  me 
of  history  perhaps  or  social  organisation,  or  sum- 
marising some  book  he  had  read.  He  talked  to  me  of 
anything  that  interested  him,  regardless  of  my  limita- 
tions. Then  he  would  begin  to  note  the  growth  of  the 
weeds.  "  This  won't  do/'  he  would  say  and  pull  up  a 
handful. 

More  weeding  would  follow  and  the  talk  would  be- 
come fragmentary.  His  hands  would  become  earthy, 
his  nails  black,  weeds  would  snap  off  in  his  careless 
grip,  leaving  the  roots  behind.  The  world  would 
darken.  He  would  look  at  his  fingers  with  disgusted 
astonishment.  "Curse  these  weeds!"  he  would  say 
from  his  heart.  His  discourse  was  at  an  end.  .  .  . 

I  have  memories,  too,  of  his  sudden  unexpected 
charges  into  the  tranquillity  of  the  house,  his  hands 
and  clothes  intensively  enriched.  He  would  come  in 
like  a  whirlwind.  "  This  damned  stuff  all  over  me 
and  the  Agricultural  Chemistry  Class  at  six!  Bah! 
Aaaaaah! " 

My  mother  would  never  learn  not  to  attempt  to 
break  him  of  swearing  on  such  occasions.  She  would 
remain  standing  a  little  stiffly  in  the  scullery  refusing 
to  assist  him  to  the  adjectival  towel  he  sought. 

"  If  you  say  such  things " 

He  would  dance  with  rage  and  hurl  the  soap  about. 


BROM  STEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    29 

"  The  towel ! "  he  would  cry,  flicking  suds  from  his 
fingers  in  every  direction ;  "  the  towel !  I'll  let  the 
blithering  class  slide  if  you  don't  give  me  the  towel! 
I'll  give  up  everything,  I  tell  you — everything!"  .  .  . 

At  last  with  the  failure  of  the  lettuces  came  the 
breaking  point.  I  was  in  the  little  arbour  learning 
Latin  irregular  verbs  when  it  happened.  I  can  see  him 
still,  his  peculiar  tenor  voice  still  echoes  in  my  brain, 
shouting  his  opinion  of  intensive  culture  for  all  the 
world  to  hear,  and  slashing  away  at  that  abominable 
mockery  of  a  crop  with  a  hoe.  We  had  tied  them  up 
with  bast  only  a  week  or  so  before,  and  now  half  were 
rotten  and  half  had  shot  up  into  tall  slender  growths. 
He  had  the  hoe  in  both  hands  and  slogged.  Great 
wipes  he  made,  and  at  each  stroke  he  said,  "  Take 
that ! " 

The  air  was  thick  with  flying  fragments  of  abortive 
salad.  It  was  a  fantastic  massacre.  It  was  the  French 
Revolution  of  that  cold  tyranny,  the  vindictive  over- 
throw of  the  pampered  vegetable  aristocrats.  After  he 
had  assuaged  his  passion  upon  them,  he  turned  for 
other  prey;  he  kicked  holes  in  two  of  our  noblest 
marrows,  flicked  off  the  heads  of  half  a  row  of  arti- 
chokes, and  shied  the  hoe  with  a  splendid  smash  into 
the  cucumber  frame.  Something  of  the  awe  of  that 
moment  returns  to  me  as  I  write  of  it. 

"Well,  my  boy,"  he  said,  approaching  with  an 
expression  of  beneficent  happiness,  "  I've  done  with 
gardening.  Let's  go  for  a  walk  like  reasonable  beings. 
I've  had  enough  of  this  " — his  face  was  convulsed  for 
an  instant  with  bitter  resentment — "  Pandering  to 
cabbages." 

§  4 

That  afternoon's  walk  sticks  in  my  memory  for  many 
reasons.  One  is  that  we  went  further  than  I  had  ever 
been  before;  far  beyond  Keston  and  nearly  to  Seven- 


80        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

oaks,  coming  back  by  train  from  Dunton  Green,  and 
the  other  is  that  my  father  as  he  went  along  talked 
about  himself,  not  so  much  to  me  as  to  himself,  and 
about  life  and  what  he  had  done  with  it.  He  mono- 
logued  so  that  at  times  he  produced  an  effect  of  weird 
world-forgetfulness.  I  listened  puzzled,  and  at  that 
time  not  understanding  many  things  that  afterwards 
became  plain  to  me.  It  is  only  in  recent  years  that  I 
have  discovered  the  pathos  of  that  monologue;  how 
friendless  my  father  was  and  uncompanioned  in  his 
thoughts  and  feelings,  and  what  a  hunger  he  may  have 
felt  for  the  sympathy  of  the  undeveloped  youngster 
who  trotted  by  his  side. 

"  I'm  no  gardener,"  he  said,  "  I'm  no  anything. 
Why  the  devil  did  I  start  gardening? 

'*  I  suppose  man  was  created  to  mind  a  garden.  .  . 
But  the  Fall  let  us  out  of  that!  What  was  I  created 
for  ?  God !  what  was  I  created  for  ?  .  .  . 

"  Slaves  to  matter !  Minding  inanimate  things ! 
It  doesn't  suit  me,  you  know.  I've  got  no  hands  and 
no  patience.  I've  mucked  about  with  life.  Mucked 
about  with  life."  He  suddenly  addressed  himself  to 
me,  and  for  an  instant  I  started  like  an  eavesdropper 
discovered.  "  Whatever  you  do,  boy,  whatever  you  do, 
make  a  Plan.  Make  a  good  Plan  and  stick  to  it.  Find 
out  what  life  is  about — I  never  have — and  set  yourself 
to  do — whatever  you  ought  to  do.  I  admit  it's  a 
puzzle.  .  .  . 

"  Those  damned  houses  have  been  the  curse  of  my 
life.  Stucco  white  elephants !  Beastly  cracked  stucco 
with  stains  of  green — black  and  green.  Conferva 
and  soot.  .  .  .  Property,  they  are!  .  .  .  Beware  of 
Things,  Dick,  beware  of  Things!  Before  you  know 
where  you  are  you  are  waiting  on  them  and  minding 
them.  They'll  eat  your  life  up.  Eat  up  your  hours 
and  your  blood  and  energy!  When  those  houses  came 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    81 

to  me,  I  ought  to  have  sold  them — or  fled  the  country. 
I  ought  to  have  cleared  out.  Sarcophagi — eaters  of 
men!  Oh!  the  hours  and  days  of  work,  the  nights  of 
anxiety  those  vile  houses  have  cost  me!  The  painting! 
It  worked  up  my  arms;  it  got  all  over  me.  I  stank  of 
it.  It  made  me  ill.  It  isn't  living — it's  minding.  .  .  . 

"  Property's  the  curse  of  life.  Property !  Ugh ! 
Look  at  this  country  all  cut  up  into  silly  little  paral- 
lelograms, look  at  all  those  villas  we  passed  just  now 
and  those  potato  patches  and  that  tarred  shanty  and 
the  hedge!  Somebody's  minding  every  bit  of  it  like 
a  dog  tied  to  a  cart's  tail.  Patching  it  and  bothering 
about  it.  Bothering!  Yapping  at  every  passer-by. 
Look  at  that  notice-board!  One  rotten  worried  little 
beast  wants  to  keep  us  other  rotten  little  beasts  off  his 
patch, — God  knows  why!  Look  at  the  weeds  in  it. 
Look  at  the  mended  fence!  .  .  .  There's  no  property 
worth  having,  Dick,  but  money.  That's  only  good  to 
spend.  All  these  things.  Human  souls  buried  under 
a  cartload  of  blithering  rubbish.  .  .  . 

"  I'm  not  a  fool,  Dick.  I  have  qualities,  imagina- 
tion, a  sort  of  go.  I  ought  to  have  made  a  better  thing 
of  life. 

"  I'm  sure  I  could  have  done  things.  Only  the  old 
people  pulled  my  leg.  They  started  me  wrong.  They 
never  started  me  at  all.  I  only  began  to  find  out  what 
life  was  like  when  I  was  nearly  forty. 

"If  I'd  gone  to  a  university;  if  I'd  had  any  sort  of 
sound  training,  if  I  hadn't  slipped  into  the  haphazard 
places  that  came  easiest.  .  .  . 

"  Nobody  warned  me.  Nobody.  It  isn't  a  world 
we  live  in,  Dick;  it's  a  cascade  of  accidents;  it's  a 
chaos  exasperated  by  policemen!  You  be  warned  in 
time,  Dick.  You  stick  to  a  plan.  Don't  wait  for  any 
one  to  show  you  the  way.  Nobody  will.  There  isn't  a 
way  till  you  make  one.  Get  education,  get  a  good 


32        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

education.  Fight  your  way  to  the  top.  It's  your  only 
chance.  I've  watched  you.  You'll  do  no  good  at  dig- 
ding  and  property  minding.  There  isn't  a  neighbour 
in  Bromstead  won't  be  able  to  skin  you  at  suchlike 
games.  You  and  I  are  the  brainy  unstable  kind,  top- 
side or  nothing.  And  if  ever  those  blithering  houses 
come  to  you — don't  have  'em.  Give  them  away !  Dyna- 
mite 'em — and  off!  Live,  Dick!  I'll  get  rid  of  them 
for  you  if  I  can,  Dick,  but  remember  what  I  say."  .  .  . 

So  it  was  my  father  discoursed,  if  not  in  those 
particular  words,  yet  exactly  in  that  manner,  as  he 
slouched  along  the  southward  road,  with  resentful  eyes 
becoming  less  resentful  as  he  talked,  and  flinging  out 
clumsy  illustrative  motions  at  the  outskirts  of  Brom- 
stead as  we  passed  along  them.  That  afternoon  he 
hated  Bromstead,  from  its  foot-tiring  pebbles  up.  He 
had  no  illusions  about  Bromstead  or  himself.  I  have 
the  clearest  impression  of  him  in  his  garden-stained 
tweeds  with  a  deer-stalker  hat  on  the  back  of  his  head 
and  presently  a  pipe  sometimes  between  his  teeth  and 
sometimes  in  his  gesticulating  hand,  as  he  became 
diverted  by  his  talk  from  his  original  exasperation.  .  .  . 

This  particular  afternoon  is  no  doubt  mixed  up  in 
my  memory  with  many  other  afternoons;  all  sorts  of 
things  my  father  said  and  did  at  different  times  have 
got  themselves  referred  to  it;  it  filled  me  at  the  time 
with  a  great  unprecedented  sense  of  fellowship  and  it 
has  become  the  symbol  now  for  all  our  intercourse 
together.  If  I  didn't  understand  the  things  he  said,  I 
did  the  mood  he  was  in.  He  gave  me  two  very  broad 
ideas  in  that  talk  and  the  talks  I  have  mingled  with  it; 
he  gave  them  to  me  very  clearly  and  they  have  re- 
mained fundamental  in  my  mind;  one  a  sense  of  the 
extraordinary  confusion  and  waste  and  planlessness  of 
.the  human  life  that  went  on  all  about  us ;  and  the  other 
of  a  great  ideal  of  order  and  economy  which  he  called 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER   33 

variously  Science  and  Civilisation,  and  which,  though  I 
do  not  remember  that  he  ever  used  that  word,  I  sup- 
pose many  people  nowadays  would  identify  with  So- 
cialism,— as  the  Fabians  expound  it. 

He  was  not  very  definite  about  this  Science,  you 
must  understand,  but  he  seemed  always  to  be  waving 
his  hand  towards  it, — just  as  his  contemporary  Tenny- 
son seems  always  to  be  doing — he  belonged  to  his  age 
and  mostly  his  talk  was  destructive  of  the  limited 
beliefs  of  his  time,  he  led  me  to  infer  rather  than 
actually  told  me  that  this  Science  was  coming,  a  spirit 
of  light  and  order,  to  the  rescue  of  a  world  groaning 
and  travailing  in  muddle  for  the  want  of  it.  ... 

§  5 

When  I  think  of  Bromstead  nowadays  I  find  it 
inseparably  bound  up  with  the  disorders  of  my  father's 
gardening,  and  the  odd  patchings  and  paintings  that 
disfigured  his  houses.  It  was  all  of  a  piece  with  that. 

Let  me  try  and  give  something  of  the  quality  of 
Bromstead  and  something  of  its  history.  It  is  the 
quality  and  history  of  a  thousand  places  round  and 
about  London,  and  round  and  about  the  other  great 
centres  of  population  in  the  world.  Indeed  it  is  in  a 
measure  the  quality  of  the  whole  of  this  modern  world 
from  which  we  who  have  the  statesman's  passion  strug- 
gle to  evolve,  and  dream  still  of  evolving  order. 

First,  then,  you  must  think  of  Bromstead  a  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  ago,  as  a  narrow  irregular  little 
street  of  thatched  houses  strung  out  on  the  London  and 
Dover  Road,  a  little  mellow  sample  unit  of  a  social 
order  that  had  a  kind  of  completeness,  at  its  level,  of 
its  own.  At  that  time  its  population  numbered  a 
little  under  two  thousand  people,  mostly  engaged  in 
agricultural  work  or  in  trades  serving  agriculture. 
There  was  a  blacksmith,  a  saddler,  a  chemist,  a  doctor, 


34        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

a  barber,  a  linen-draper  (who  brewed  his  own  beer),  a 
veterinary  surgeon,  a  hardware  shop,  and  two  capacious 
inns.  Round  and  about  it  were  a  number  of  pleasant 
gentlemen's  seats,  whose  owners  went  frequently  to 
London  town  in  their  coaches  along  the  very  tolerable 
high-road.  The  church  was  big  enough  to  hold  the 
whole  population,  were  people  minded  to  go  to  church, 
and  indeed  a  large  proportion  did  go,  and  all  who 
married  were  married  in  it,  and  everybody,  to  begin 
with,  was  christened  at  its  font  and  buried  at  last  in 
its  yew-shaded  graveyard.  Everybody  knew  everybody 
in  the  place.  It  was,  in  fact,  a  definite  place  and 
a  real  human  community  in  those  days.  There  was  a 
pleasant  old  market-house  in  the  middle  of  the  town 
with  a  weekly  market,  and  an  annual  fair  at  which 
much  cheerful  merry  making  and  homely  intoxication 
occurred;  there  was  a  pack  of  hounds  which  hunted 
within  five  miles  of  London  Bridge,  and  the  local 
gentry  would  occasionally  enliven  the  place  with  valiant 
cricket  matches  for  a  hundred  guineas  a  side,  to  th« 
vast  excitement  of  the  entire  population.  It  was  very 
much  the  same  sort  of  place  that  it  had  been  for  three 
or  four  centuries.  A  Bromstead  Rip  van  Winkle  from 
1550  returning  in  1750  would  have  found  most  of  the 
old  houses  still  as  he  had  known  them,  the  same  trades 
a  little  improved  and  differentiated  one  from  the  other, 
the  same  roads  rather  more  carefully  tended,  the  Inns 
not  very  much  altered,  the  ancient  familiar  market- 
house.  The  occasional  wheeled  traffic  would  have 
struck  him  as  the  most  remarkable  difference,  next 
perhaps  to  the  swaggering  painted  stone  monuments 
instead  of  brasses  and  the  protestant  severity  of  the 
communion-table  in  the  parish  church, — both  from  the 
material  point  of  view  very  little  things.  A  Rip  van 
Winkle  from  1350,  again,  would  have  noticed  scarcely 
greater  changes;  fewer  clergy,  more  people,  and  par- 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    35 

ticularly  more  people  of  the  middling  sort;  the  glass 
in  the  windows  of  many  of  the  houses,  the  stylish 
chimneys  springing  up  everywhere  would  have  im- 
pressed him,  and  suchlike  details.  The  place  would 
have  had  the  same  boundaries,  the  same  broad  essential 
features,  would  have  been  still  itself  in  the  way  that 
a  man  is  still  himself  after  he  has  "  filled  out "  a  little 
and  grown  a  longer  beard  and  changed  his  clothes. 

But  after  1750  something  got  hold  of  the  world, 
something  that  was  destined  to  alter  the  scale  of  every 
human  affair. 

That  something  was  machinery  and  a  vague 
energetic  disposition  to  improve  material  things.  In 
another  part  of  England  ingenious  people  were  begin- 
ning to  use  coal  in  smelting  iron,  and  were  producing 
metal  in  abundance  and  metal  castings  in  sizes  that 
had  hitherto  been  unattainable.  Without  warning  or 
preparation,  increment  involving  countless  possibilities 
of  further  increment  was  coming  to  the  strength  of 
horses  and  men.  "  Power,"  all  unsuspected,  was  flow- 
ing like  a  drug  into  the  veins  of  the  social  body. 

Nobody  seems  to  have  perceived  this  coming  of 
power,  and  nobody  had  calculated  its  probable  con- 
sequences. Suddenly,  almost  inadvertently,  people 
found  themselves  doing  things  that  would  have  amazed 
their  ancestors.  They  began  to  construct  wheeled 
vehicles  much  more  easily  and  cheaply  than  they  had 
ever  done  before,  to  make  up  roads  and  move  things 
about  that  had  formerly  been  esteemed  too  heavy  for 
locomotion,  to  join  woodwork  with  iron  nails  instead 
of  wooden  pegs,  to  achieve  all  sorts  of  mechanical 
possibilities,  to  trade  more  freely  and  manufacture  on 
a  larger  scale,  to  send  goods  abroad  in  a  wholesale  and 
systematic  way,  to  bring  back  commodities  from  over- 
seas, not  simply  spices  and  fine  commodities,  but  goods 
in  bulk.  The  new  influence  spread  to  agriculture,  iron 


36        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

appliances  replaced  wooden,  breeding  of  stock  became 
systematic,  paper-making  and  printing  increased  and 
cheapened.  Roofs  of  slate  and  tile  appeared  amidst 
and  presently  prevailed  over  the  original  Bromstead 
thatch,  the  huge  space  of  Common  to  the  south  was 
extensively  enclosed,  and  what  had  been  an  ill-defined 
horse-track  to  Dover,  only  passable  by  adventurous 
coaches  in  dry  weather,  became  the  Dover  Road,  and 
was  presently  the  route  first  of  one  and  then  of  several 
daily  coaches.  The  High  Street  was  discovered  to  be 
too  tortuous  for  these  awakening  energies,  and  a  new 
road  cut  off  its  worst  contortions.  Residential  villas 
appeared  occupied  by  retired  tradesmen  and  widows, 
who  esteemed  the  place  healthy,  and  by  others  of  a 
strange  new  unoccupied  class  of  people  who  had  money 
invested  in  joint-stock  enterprises.  First  one  and  then 
several  boys'  boarding-schools  came,  drawing  their 
pupils  from  London, — my  grandfather's  was  one  of 
these.  London,  twelve  miles  to  the  north-west,  was 
making  itself  felt  more  and  more. 

But  this  was  only  the  beginning  of  the  growth 
period,  the  first  trickle  of  the  coming  flood  of  mechani- 
cal power.  Away  in  the  north  they  were  casting  iron 
in  bigger  and  bigger  forms,  working  their  way  to  the 
production  of  steel  on  a  large  scale,  applying  power  in 
factories.  Bromstead  had  almost  doubled  in  size  again 
long  before  the  railway  came;  there  was  hardly  any 
thatch  left  in  the  High  Street,  but  instead  were  houses 
with  handsome  brass-knockered  front  doors  and  several 
windows,  and  shops  with  shop-fronts  all  of  square  glass 
panes,  and  the  place  was  lighted  publicly  now  by  oil 
lamps — previously  only  one  flickering  lamp  outside 
each  of  the  coaching  inns  had  broken  the  nocturnal 
darkness.  And  there  was  talk,  it  long  remained  talk, — 
of  gas.  The  gasworks  came  in  1834,  and  about  that 
date  my  father's  three  houses  must  have  been  built 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    37 

convenient  for  the  London  Road.  They  mark  nearly 
the  beginning  of  the  real  suburban  quality;  they  were 
let  at  first  to  City  people  still  engaged  in  business. 

And  then  hard  on  the  gasworks  had  come  the  rail- 
way and  cheap  coal;  there  was  a  wild  outbreak  of 
brickfields  upon  the  claylands  to  the  east,  and  the 
Great  Growth  had  begun  in  earnest.  The  agricultural 
placidities  that  had  formerly  come  to  the  very  borders 
of  the  High  Street  were  broken  up  north,  west  and 
south,  by  new  roads.  This  enterprising  person  and 
then  that  began  to  "  run  up  "  houses,  irrespective  of 
every  other  enterprising  person  who  was  doing  the 
same  thing.  A  Local  Board  came  into  existence,  and 
with  much  hesitation  and  penny-wise  economy  in- 
augurated drainage  works.  Rates  became  a  common 
topic,  a  fact  of  accumulating  importance.  Several 
chapels  of  zinc  and  iron  appeared,  and  also  a  white 
new  church  in  commercial  Gothic  upon  the  common, 
and  another  of  red  brick  in  the  residential  district  out 
beyond  the  brickfields  towards  Chessington. 

The  population  doubled  again  and  doubled  again, 
and  became  particularly  teeming  in  the  prolific  "  work- 
ing-class "  district  about  the  deep-rutted,  muddy,  coal- 
blackened  roads  between  the  gasworks,  Blodgett's 
laundries,  and  the  railway  goods-yard.  Weekly  prop- 
erties, that  is  to  say  small  houses  built  by  small 
property  owners  and  let  by  the  week,  sprang  up  also  in 
the  Cage  Fields,  and  presently  extended  right  up  the 
London  Road.  A  single  national  school  in  an  incon- 
venient situation  set  itself  inadequately  to  collect  sub- 
scriptions and  teach  the  swarming,  sniffing,  grimy 
offspring  of  this  dingy  new  population  to  read.  The 
villages  of  Beckington,  which  used  to  be  three  miles  to 
the  west,  and  Blamely  four  miles  to  the  east  of  Brom- 
stead,  were  experiencing  similar  distensions  and  pro- 
liferations, and  grew  out  to  meet  us.  All  effect  of 


38        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

locality  or  community  had  gone  from  these  places  long 
before  I  was  born;  hardly  any  one  knew  any  one;  there 
was  no  general  meeting  place  any  more,  the  old  fairs 
were  just  common  nuisances  haunted  by  gypsies,  van 
showmen,  Cheap  Jacks  and  London  roughs,  the  churches 
were  incapable  of  a  quarter  of  the  population.  One  or 
two  local  papers  of  shameless  veniality  reported  the 
proceedings  of  the  local  Bench  and  the  local  Board, 
compelled  tradesmen  who  were  interested  in  these 
affairs  to  advertise,  used  the  epithet  "  Bromstedian  "  as 
one  expressing  peculiar  virtues,  and  so  maintained  in 
the  general  mind  a  weak  tradition  of  some  local  quality 
that  embraced  us  all.  Then  the  parish  graveyard  filled 
up  and  became  a  scandal,  and  an  ambitious  area  with 
an  air  of  appetite  was  walled  in  by  a  Bromstead 
Cemetery  Company,  and  planted  with  suitably  high- 
minded  and  sorrowful  varieties  of  conifer.  A  stone- 
mason took  one  of  the  earlier  villas  with  a  front  garden 
at  the  end  of  the  High  Street,  and  displayed  a  supply 
of  urns  on  pillars  and  headstones  and  crosses  in  stone, 
marble,  and  granite,  that  would  have  sufficed  to  com- 
memorate in  elaborate  detail  the  entire  population  of 
Bromstead  as  one  found  it  in  1750. 

The  cemetery  was  made  when  I  was  a  little  boy  of 
five  or  six;  I  was  in  the  full  tide  of  building  and 
growth  from  the  first;  the  second  railway  with  its 
station  at  Bromstead  North  and  the  drainage  followed 
when  I  was  ten  or  eleven,  and  all  my  childish  memo- 
ries are  of  digging  and  wheeling,  of  woods  invaded  by 
building,  roads  gashed  open  and  littered  with  iron  pipes 
amidst  a  fearful  smell  of  gas,  of  men  peeped  at  and 
seen  toiling  away  deep  down  in  excavations,  of  hedges 
broken  down  and  replaced  by  planks,  of  wheelbarrows 
and  builders'  sheds,  of  rivulets  overtaken  and  swal- 
lowed up  by  drain-pipes.  Big  trees,  and  especially 
elms,  cleared  of  undergrowth  and  left  standing  amid 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    39 

such  things,  acquired  a  peculiar  tattered  dinginess 
rather  in  the  quality  of  needy  widow  women  who  have 
seen  happier  days. 

The  Ravensbrook  of  my  earlier  memories  was  a 
beautiful  stream.  It  came  into  my  world  out  of  a 
mysterious  Beyond,  out  of  a  garden,  splashing  brightly 
down  a  weir  which  had  once  been  the  weir  of  a  mill. 
(Above  the  weir  and  inaccessible  there  were  bulrushes 
growing  in  splendid  clumps,  and  beyond  that,  pampas 
grass,  yellow  and  crimson  spikes  of  hollyhock,  and 
blue  suggestions  of  wonderland.)  From  the  pool  at 
the  foot  of  this  initial  cascade  it  flowed  in  a  leisurely 
fashion  beside  a  footpath, — there  were  two  pretty 
thatched  cottages  on  the  left,  and  here  were  ducks, 
and  there  were  willows  on  the  right, — and  so  came 
to  where  great  trees  grew  on  high  banks  on  either 
hand  and  bowed  closer,  and  at  last  met  overhead. 
This  part  was  difficult  to  reach  because  of  an  old 
fence,  but  a  little  boy  might  glimpse  that  long  cavern 
of  greenery  by  wading.  Either  I  have  actually  seen 
kingfishers  there,  or  my  father  has  described  them 
so  accurately  to  me  that  he  inserted  them  into  my 
memory.  I  remember  them  there  anyhow.  Most  of 
that  overhung  part  I  never  penetrated  at  all,  but 
followed  the  field  path  with  my  mother  and  met  the 
stream  again,  where  beyond  there  were  flat  meadows, 
Roper's  meadows.  The  Ravensbrook  went  meandering 
across  the  middle  of  these,  now  between  steep  banks, 
and  now  with  wide  shallows  at  the  bends  where  the 
cattle  waded  and  drank.  Yellow  and  purple  loose- 
strife and  ordinary  rushes  grew  in  clumps  along  the 
bank,  and  now  and  then  a  willow.  On  rare  occasions 
of  rapture  one  might  see  a  rat  cleaning  his  whiskers 
at  the  water's  edge.  The  deep  places  were  rich  with 
tangled  weeds,  and  in  them  fishes  lurked — to  me 
they  were  big  fishes — water-boatmen  and  water-beetles 


40        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

traversed  the  calm  surface  of  these  still  deeps;  in 
one  pool  were  yellow  lilies  and  water-soldiers,  and  in 
the  shoaly  places  hovering  fleets  of  small  fry  basked 
in  the  sunshine — to  vanish  in  a  flash  at  one's  shadow. 
In  one  place,  too,  were  Rapids,  where  the  stream  woke 
with  a  start  from  a  dreamless  brooding  into  foaming 
panic  and  babbled  and  hastened.  Well  do  I  remember 
that  half-mile  of  rivulet;  all  other  rivers  and  cascades 
have  their  reference  to  it  for  me.  And  after  I  was 
eleven,  and  before  we  left  Bromstead,  all  the  delight 
and  beauty  of  it  was  destroyed. 

The  volume  of  its  water  decreased  abruptly — I 
suppose  the  new  drainage  works  that  linked  us  up  with 
Beckington,  and  made  me  first  acquainted  with  the 
geological  quality  of  the  London  clay,  had  to  do  with 
that — until  only  a  weak  uncleansing  trickle  remained. 
That  at  first  did  not  strike  me  as  a  misfortune.  An 
adventurous  small  boy  might  walk  dryshod  in  places 
hitherto  inaccessible.  But  hard  upon  that  came  the 
pegs,  the  planks  and  carts  and  devastation.  Roper's 
meadows,  being  no  longer  in  fear  of  floods,  were  now  to 
be  slashed  out  into  parallelograms  of  untidy  road,  and 
built  upon  with  rows  of  working-class  cottages.  The 
roads  came, — horribly;  the  houses  followed.  They 
seemed  to  rise  in  the  night.  People  moved  into  them 
as  soon  as  the  roofs  were  on,  mostly  workmen  and  their 
young  wives,  and  already  in  a  year  some  of  these  raw 
houses  stood  empty  again  from  defaulting  tenants,  with 
windows  broken  and  wood-work  warping  and  rotting. 
The  Ravensbrook  became  a  dump  for  old  iron,  rusty 
cans,  abandoned  boots  and  the  like,  and  was  a  river 
only  when  unusual  rains  filled  it  for  a  day  or  so  with 
an  inky  flood  of  surface  water.  .  .  . 

That  indeed  was  my  most  striking  perception  in 
the  growth  of  Bromstead.  The  Ravensbrook  had 
been  important  to  my  imaginative  life;  that  way  had 


EROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    41 

always  been  my  first  choice  in  all  my  walks  with  my 
mother,  and  its  rapid  swamping  by  the  new  urban 
growth  made  it  indicative  of  all  the  other  things 
that  had  happened  just  before  my  time,  or  were  still, 
at  a  less  dramatic  pace,  happening.  I  realised  that 
building  was  the  enemy.  I  began  to  understand  why 
in  every  direction  out  of  Bromstead  one  walked  past 
scaffold-poles  into  litter,  why  fragments  of  broken 
brick  and  cinder  mingled  in  every  path,  and  the 
significance  of  the  universal  notice-boards,  either 
white  and  new  or  a  year  old  and  torn  and  battered, 
promising  sites,  proffering  houses  to  be  sold  or  let, 
abusing  and  intimidating  passers-by  for  fancied 
trespass,  and  protecting  rights  of  way. 

It  is  difficult  to  disentangle  now  what  I  understood 
at  this  time  and  what  I  have  since  come  to  understand, 
but  it  seems  to  me  that  even  in  those  childish  days  I 
was  acutely  aware  of  an  invading  and  growing  disorder. 
The  serene  rhythms  of  the  old  established  agriculture, 
I  see  now,  were  everywhere  being  replaced  by  culti- 
vation under  notice  and  snatch  crops;  hedges  ceased  to 
be  repaired,  and  were  replaced  by  cheap  iron  railings 
or  chunks  of  corrugated  iron;  more  and  more  hoard- 
ings sprang  up,  and  contributed  more  and  more  to  the 
nomad  tribes  of  filthy  paper  scraps  that  flew  before 
the  wind  and  overspread  the  country.  The  outskirts 
of  Bromstead  were  a  maze  of  exploitation  roads  that 
led  nowhere,  that  ended  in  tarred  fences  studded  with 
nails  (I  don't  remember  barbed  wire  in  those  days; 
I  think  the  Zeitgeist  did  not  produce  that  lentil  later), 
and  in  trespass  boards  that  used  vehement  language. 
Broken  glass,  tin  cans,  and  ashes  and  paper  abounded. 
Cheap  glass,  cheap  tin,  abundant  fuel,  and  a  free 
untaxed  Press  had  rushed  upon  a  world  quite  un- 
prepared to  dispose  of  these  blessings  when  the  fulness 
of  enjoyment  was  past. 


42        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

I  suppose  one  might  have  persuaded  oneself  that 
all  this  was  but  the  replacement  of  an  ancient  tran- 
quillity, or  at  least  an  ancient  balance,  by  a  new 
order.  Only  to  my  eyes,  quickened  by  my  father's 
intimations,  it  was  manifestly  no  order  at  all.  It 
was  a  multitude  of  incoordinated  fresh  starts,  each 
more  sweeping  and  destructive  than  the  last,  and 
none  of  them  ever  really  worked  out  to  a  ripe  and 
satisfactory  completion.  Each  left  a  legacy  of  prod- 
ucts, houses,  humanity,  or  what  not,  in  its  wake.  It 
was  a  sort  of  progress  that  had  bolted;  it  was  change 
out  of  hand,  and  going  at  an  unprecedented  pace 
nowhere  in  particular. 

No,  the  Victorian  epoch  was  not  the  dawn  of  a 
new  era;  it  was  a  hasty,  trial  experiment,  a  gigantic 
experiment  of  the  most  slovenly  and  wasteful  kind. 
I  suppose  it  was  necessary;  I  suppose  all  things  are 
necessary.  I  suppose  that  before  men  will  discipline 
themselves  to  learn  and  plan,  they  must  first  see  in  a 
hundred  convincing  forms  the  folly  and  muddle  that 
come  from  headlong,  aimless  and  haphazard  methods. 
The  nineteenth  century  was  an  age  of  demonstrations, 
some  of  them  very  impressive  demonstrations,  of  the 
powers  that  have  come  to  mankind,  but  of  permanent 
achievement,  what  will  our  descendants  cherish?  It 
is  hard  to  estimate  what  grains  of  precious  metal  may 
not  be  found  in  a  mud  torrent  of  human  production 
or  so  large  a  scale,  but  will  any  one,  a  hundred  years 
from  now,  consent  to  live  in  the  houses  the  Victorians 
built,  travel  by  their  roads  or  railways,  value  the 
furnishings  they  made  to  live  among  or  esteem,  except 
for  curious  or  historical  reasons,  their  prevalent  art 
and  the  clipped  and  limited  literature  that  satisfied 
their  souls? 

That  age  which  bore  me  was  indeed  a  world  full 
of  restricted  and  undisciplined  people,  overtaken  by 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    43 

power,  by  possessions  and  great  new  freedoms,  and 
unable  to  make  any  civilised  use  of  them  whatever; 
stricken  now  by  this  idea  and  now  by  that,  tempted 
first  by  one  possession  and  then  another  to  ill- 
considered  attempts;  it  was  my  father's  exploitation 
of  his  villa  gardens  on  the  wholesale  level.  The  whole 
of  Bromstead  as  I  remember  it,  and  as  I  saw  it  last — 
it  is  a  year  ago  now — is  a  dull  useless  boiling-up  of 
human  activities,  an  immense  clustering  of  futilities. 
It  is  as  unfinished  as  ever;  the  builders'  roads  still 
run  out  and  end  in  mid-field  in  their  old  fashion; 
the  various  enterprises  jumble  in  the  same  hopeless 
contradiction,  if  anything  intensified.  Pretentious 
villas  jostle  slums,  and  public-house  and  tin  tabernacle 
glower  at  one  another  across  the  cat-haunted  lot  that 
intervenes.  Roper's  meadows  are  now  quite  frankly 
a  slum;  back  doors  and  sculleries  gape  towards  the 
railway,  their  yards  are  hung  with  tattered  washing 
unashamed;  and  there  seem  to  be  more  boards  by 
the  railway  every  time  I  pass,  advertising  pills  and 
pickles,  tonics  and  condiments,  and  suchlike  solicitudes 
of  a  people  with  no  natural  health  nor  appetite  left  in 
them  ,  .  . 

Well,  we  have  to  do  better.  Failure  is  not  failure 
nor  waste  wasted  if  it  sweeps  away  illusion  and  lights 
the  road  to  a  plan. 

§  6 

Chaotic  indiscipline,  ill-adjusted  effort,  spasmodic 
aims,  these  give  the  quality  of  all  my  Bromstead 
memories.  The  crowning  one  of  them  all  rises  to 
desolating  tragedy.  I  remember  now  the  wan  spring 
sunshine  of  that  Sunday  morning,  the  stiff  feeling  of 
best  clothes  and  aggressive  cleanliness  and  formality, 
when  I  and  my  mother  returned  from  church  to  find 
my  father  dead.  He  had  been  pruning  the  grape 


44        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

vine.  He  had  never  had  a  ladder  long  enough  to 
reach  the  sill  of  the  third-floor  windows — at  house- 
painting  times  he  had  borrowed  one  from  the  plumber 
who  mixed  his  paint — and  he  had  in  his  own  happy- 
go-lucky  way  contrived  a  combination  of  the  garden 
fruit  ladder  with  a  battered  kitchen  table  that  served 
all  sorts  of  odd  purposes  in  an  outhouse.  He  had 
stayed  up  this  arrangement  by  means  of  the  garden 
roller,  and  the  roller  had  at  the  critical  moment — rolled. 
He  was  lying  close  by  the  garden  door  with  his  head 
queerly  bent  back  against  a  broken  and  twisted  rain- 
water pipe,  an  expression  of  pacific  contentment  on  his 
face,  a  bamboo  curtain  rod  with  a  tableknife  tied  to 
end  of  it,  still  gripped  in  his  hand.  We  had  been 
rapping  for  some  time  at  the  front  door  unable  to  make 
him  hear,  and  then  we  came  round  by  the  door  in  the 
side  trellis  into  the  garden  and  so  discovered  him. 

"  Arthur !  "  I  remember  my  mother  crying  with  the 
strangest  break  in  her  voice,  "What  are  you  doing 
there?  Arthur!  And — Sunday!'' 

I  was  coming  behind  her,  musing  remotely,  when 
the  quality  of  her  voice  roused  me.  She  stood  as  if  she 
could  not  go  near  him.  He  had  always  puzzled  her  so, 
he  and  his  ways,  and  this  seemed  only  another  enigma. 
Then  the  truth  dawned  on  her,  she  shrieked  as  if  afraid 
of  him,  ran  a  dozen  steps  back  towards  the  trellis  door 
and  stopped  and  clasped  her  ineffectual  gloved  hands, 
leaving  me  staring  blankly,  too  astonished  for  feeling, 
at  the  carelessly  flung  limbs. 

The  same  idea  came  to  me  also.  I  ran  to  her. 
"  Mother !  "  I  cried,  pale  to  the  depths  of  my  spirit, 
"  Is  he  dead?  " 

I  had  been  thinking  two  minutes  before  of  the  cold 
fruit  pie  that  glorified  our  Sunday  dinner-table,  and 
how  I  might  perhaps  get  into  the  tree  at  the  end  of  the 
garden  to  read  in  the  afternoon.  Now  an  immense  fact 


BROMSTEAD  AND  MY  FATHER    45 

had  come  down  like  a  curtain  and  blotted  out  all  my 
childish  world.  My  father  was  lying  dead  before  my 
eyes.  ...  I  perceived  that  my  mother  was  helpless 
and  that  things,  must  be  done. 

"  Mother ! "  I  said,  "  we  must  get  Doctor  Beaseley, — * 
and  carry  him  indoors." 


CHAPTER    THE     THIRD 

SCHOLASTIC 


MY  formal  education  began  in  a  small  preparatory 
school  in  Bromstead.  I  went  there  as  a  day  boy.  The 
charge  for  my  instruction  was  mainly  set  off  by  the 
periodic  visits  of  my  father  with  a  large  bag  of  battered 
fossils  to  lecture  to  us  upon  geology.  I  was  one  of 
those  fortunate  youngsters  who  take  readily  to  school 
work,  I  had  a  good  memory,  versatile  interests  and  a 
considerable  appetite  for  commendation,  and  when  I 
was  barely  twelve  I  got  a  scholarship  at  the  City 
Merchants  School  and  was  entrusted  with  a  scholar's 
railway  season  ticket  to  Victoria.  After  my  father's 
death  a  large  and  very  animated  and  solidly  built  uncle 
in  tweeds  from  Staffordshire,  Uncle  Minter,  my  mother's 
sister's  husband,  with  a  remarkable  accent  and  remark- 
able vowel  sounds,  who  had  plunged  into  the  Bromstead 
home  once  or  twice  for  the  night  but  who  was  otherwise 
unknown  to  me,  came  on  the  scene,  sold  off  the  three 
gaunt  houses  with  the  utmost  gusto,  invested  the  pro- 
ceeds and  my  father's  life  insurance  money,  and  got  us 
into  a  small  villa  at  Penge  within  sight  of  that  immense 
facade  of  glass  and  iron,  the  Crystal  Palace.  Then  he 
retired  in  a  mood  of  good-natured  contempt  to  his 
native  habitat  again.  We  stayed  at  Penge  until  my 
mother's  death. 

School  became  a  large  part  of  the  world  to  me,  ab- 
sorbing my  time  and  interest,  and  I  never  acquired 
that  detailed  and  intimate  knowledge  of  Penge  and  the 
hilly  villadom  round  about,  that  I  have  of  the  town  and 
outskirts  of  Bromstead. 

46 


SCHOLASTIC  47 

It  was  a  district  of  very  much  the  same  character, 
but  it  was  more  completely  urbanised  and  nearer  to 
the  centre  of  things;  there  were  the  same  unfinished 
roads,  the  same  occasional  disconcerted  hedges  and 
trees,  the  same  butcher's  horse  grazing  under  a 
builder's  notice-board,  the  same  incidental  lapses  into 
slum.  The  Crystal  Palace  grounds  cut  off  a  large  part 
of  my  walking  radius  to  the  west  with  impassable  fences 
and  forbiddingly  expensive  turnstiles,  but  it  added  to 
the  ordinary  spectacle  of  meteorology  a  great  variety 
of  gratuitous  fireworks  which  banged  and  flared  away 
of  a  night  after  supper  and  drew  me  abroad  to  see  them 
better.  Such  walks  as  I  took,  to  Croydon,  Wembledon, 
West  Wickham  and  Greenwich,  impressed  upon  me  the 
interminable  extent  of  London's  residential  suburbs; 
mile  after  mile  one  went,  between  houses,  villas,  rows 
of  cottages,  streets  of  shops,  under  railway  arches,  over 
railway  bridges.  I  have  forgotten  the  detailed  local 
characteristics — if  there  were  any — of  much  of  that 
region  altogether.  I  was  only  there  two  years,  and 
half  my  perambulations  occurred  at  dusk  or  after 
dark.  But  with  Penge  I  associate  my  first  realisations 
of  the  wonder  and  beauty  of  twilight  and  night,  the 
effect  of  dark  walls  reflecting  lamplight,  and  the  mystery 
of  blue  haze-veiled  hillsides  of  houses,  the  glare  of  shops 
by  night,  the  glowing  steam  and  streaming  sparks  of 
railway  trains  and  railway  signals  lit  up  in  the  darkness. 
My  first  rambles  in  the  evening  occurred  at  Penge — I 
was  becoming  a  big  and  independent-spirited  boy — and 
I  began  my  experience  of  smoking  during  these  twilight 
prowls  with  the  threepenny  packets  of  American 
cigarettes  then  just  appearing  in  the  world. 

My  life  centred  upon  the  City  Merchants  School. 
Usually  I  caught  the  eight-eighteen  for  Victoria,  I  had 
a  midday  meal  and  tea;  four  nights  a  week  I  stayed 
for  preparation,  and  often  I  was  not  back  home  again 


48        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

until  within  an  hour  of  my  bedtime.  I  spent  my  half 
holidays  at  school  in  order  to  play  cricket  and  football. 
This,  and  a  pretty  voracious  appetite  for  miscellaneous 
reading  which  was  fostered  by  the  Penge  Middleton 
Library,  did  not  leave  me  much  leisure  for  local  topog- 
raphy. On  Sundays  also  I  sang  in  the  choir  at  St. 
'Martin's  Church,  and  my  mother  did  not  like  me  to 
walk  out  alone  on  the  Sabbath  afternoon,  she  herself 
slumbered,  so  that  I  wrote  or  read  at  home.  I  must 
confess  I  was  at  home  as  little  as  I  could  contrive. 

Home,  after  my  father's  death,  had  become  a  very 
quiet  and  uneventful  place  indeed.  My  mother  had 
either  an  unimaginative  temperament  or  her  mind  was 
greatly  occupied  with  private  religious  solicitudes,  and 
I  remember  her  talking  to  me  but  little,  and  that 
usually  upon  topics  I  was  anxious  to  evade.  I  had 
developed  my  own  view  about  low-Church  theology  long 
before  my  father's  death,  and  my  meditation  upon  that 
event  had  finished  my  secret  estrangement  from  my 
mother's  faith.  My  reason  would  not  permit  even  a 
remote  chance  of  his  being  in  hell,  he  was  so  manifestly 
not  evil,  and  this  religion  would  not  permit  him  a 
remote  chance  of  being  out  yet.  When  I  was  a  little 
boy  my  mother  had  taught  me  to  read  and  write  and 
pray  and  had  done  many  things  for  me,  indeed  she 
persisted  in  washing  me  and  even  in  making  my  clothes 
until  I  rebelled  against  these  things  as  indignities. 
But  our  minds  parted  very  soon.  She  never  began  to 
understand  the  mental  processes  of  my  play,  she  never 
interested  herself  in  my  school  life  and  work,  she  could 
not  understand  things  I  said;  and  she  came,  I  think, 
quite  insensibly  to  regard  me  with  something  of  the 
same  hopeless  perplexity  she  had  felt  towards  my 
father. 

Him    she    must    have    wedded    under    considerable 
delusions.  I  do  not  think  he  deceived  her,  indeed,  nor 


SCHOLASTIC  49 

do  I  suspect  him  of  mercenariness  in  their  union;  but 
no  doubt  he  played  up  to  her  requirements  in  the  half 
ingenuous  way  that  was  and  still  is  the  quality  of  most 
wooing,  and  presented  himself  as  a  very  brisk  and 
orthodox  young  man.  I  wonder  why  nearly  all  love- 
making  has  to  be  fraudulent.  Afterwards  he  must  have 
disappointed  her  cruelly  by  letting  one  aspect  after 
another  of  his  careless,  sceptical,  experimental  tempera- 
ment appear.  Her  mind  was  fixed  and  definite,  she 
embodied  all  that  confidence  in  church  and  decorum 
and  the  assurances  of  the  pulpit  which  was  characteristic 
of  the  large  mass  of  the  English  people — for  after  all, 
the  rather  low-Church  section  was  the  largest  single 
mass — in  early  Victorian  times.  She  had  dreams,  I 
suspect,  of  going  to  church  with  him  side  by  side;  she 
in  a  little  poke  bonnet  and  a  large  flounced  crinoline,  all 
mauve  and  magenta  and  starched  under  a  little  lace- 
trimmed  parasol,  and  he  in  a  tall  silk  hat  and  peg-top 
trousers  and  a  roll-collar  coat,  and  looking  rather  like 
the  Prince  Consort, — white  angels  almost  visibly  rain- 
ing benedictions  on  their  amiable  progress.  Perhaps 
she  dreamt  gently  of  much-belaced  babies  and  an 
interestingly  pious  (but  not  too  dissenting  or  fanatical) 
little  girl  or  boy  or  so,  also  angel-haunted.  And  I 
think,  too,  she  must  have  seen  herself  ruling  a  seemly 
"home  of  taste,"  with  a  vivarium  in  the  conservatory 
that  opened  out  of  the  drawing-room,  or  again,  making 
preserves  in  the  kitchen.  My  father's  science-teaching, 
his  diagrams  of  disembowelled  humanity,  his  pictures 
of  prehistoric  beasts  that  contradicted  the  Flood,  his 
disposition  towards  soft  shirts  and  loose  tweed  suits, 
his  inability  to  use  a  clothes  brush,  his  spasmodic  read- 
ing fits  and  his  bulldog  pipes,  must  have  jarred  cruelly 
with  her  rather  unintelligent  anticipations.  His  wild 
moments  of  violent  temper  when  he  would  swear  and 
smash  things,  absurd  almost  lovable  storms  that  passed 


50        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

like  summer  thunder,  must  have  been  starkly  dreadful 
to  her.  She  was  constitutionally  inadaptable,  and 
certainly  made  no  attempt  to  understand  or  tolerate 
these  outbreaks.  She  tried  them  by  her  standards,  and 
by  her  standards  they  were  wrong.  Her  standards  hid 
him  from  her.  The  blazing  things  he  said  rankled  in 
her  mind  unforgettably. 

As  I  remember  them  together  they  chafed  con- 
stantly. Her  attitude  to  nearly  all  his  moods  and  all 
his  enterprises  was  a  sceptical  disapproval.  She  treated 
him  as  something  that  belonged  to  me  and  not  to  her. 
"  Your  father/'  she  used  to  call  him,  as  though  I  had 
got  him  for  her. 

She  had  married  late  and  she  had,  I  think,  become 
mentally  self-subsisting  before  her  marriage.  Even  in 
those  Herne  Hill  days  I  used  to  wonder  what  was  going 
on  in  her  mind,  and  I  find  that  old  speculative  curiosity 
return  as  I  write  this.  She  took  a  considerable  interest 
in  the  housework  that  our  generally  servantless  con- 
dition put  upon  her — she  used  to  have  a  charwoman  in 
two  or  three  times  a  week — but  she  did  not  do  it  with 
any  great  skill.  She  covered  most  of  our  furniture  with 
flouncey  ill-fitting  covers,  and  she  cooked  plainly  and 
without  very  much  judgment.  The  Penge  house,  as  it 
contained  nearly  all  our  Bromstead  things,  was  crowded 
with  furniture,  and  is  chiefly  associated  in  my  mind 
with  the  smell  of  turpentine,  a  condiment  she  used  very 
freely  upon  the  veneered  mahogany  pieces.  My  mother 
had  an  equal  dread  of  "  blacks  "  by  day  and  the  "  night 
air,"  so  that  our  brightly  clean  windows  were  rarely 
open. 

She  took  a  morning  paper,  and  she  would  open  it 
and  glance  at  the  headlines,  but  she  did  not  read  it 
until  the  afternoon  and  then,  I  think,  she  was  interested 
only  in  the  more  violent  crimes,  and  in  railway  and 
mine  disasters  and  in  the  minutest  domesticities  of  the 


SCHOLASTIC  51 

Royal  Family.  Most  of  the  books  at  home  were  my 
father's,  and  I  do  not  think  she  opened  any  of  them. 
She  had  one  or  two  volumes  that  dated  from  her  own 
youth,  and  she  tried  in  vain  to  interest  me  in  them; 
there  was  Miss  Strickland's  Queens  of  England,  a  book 
I  remember  with  particular  animosity^,  and  Queechy  and 
the  Wide  Wide  World.  She  made  these  books  of  hers 
into  a  class  apart  by  sewing  outer  covers  upon  them  of 
calico  and  figured  muslin.  To  me  in  these  habiliments 
they  seemed  not  so  much  books  as  confederated  old 
ladies. 

My  mother  was  also  very  punctual  with  her 
religious  duties,  and  rejoiced  to  watch  me  in  the  choir. 

On  winter  evenings  she  occupied  an  armchair  on  the 
other  side  of  the  table  at  which  I  sat,  head  on  hand 
reading,  and  she  would  be  darning  stockings  or  socks 
or  the  like.  We  achieved  an  effect  of  rather  stuffy 
comfortableness  that  was  soporific,  and  in  a  passive 
way  I  think  she  found  these  among  her  happy  times. 
On  such  occasions  she  was  wont  to  put  her  work  down 
on  her  knees  and  fall  into  a  sort  of  thoughtless  musing 
that  would  last  for  long  intervals  and  rouse  my 
curiosity.  For  like  most  young  people  I  could  not 
imagine  mental  states  without  definite  forms. 

She  carried  on  a  correspondence  with  a  number  of 
cousins  and  friends,  writing  letters  in  a  slanting  Italian 
hand  and  dealing  mainly  with  births,  marriages  and 
deaths,  business  starts  (in  the  vaguest  terms)  and  the 
distresses  of  bankruptcy. 

And  yet,  you  know,  she  did  have  a  curious  intimate 
life  of  her  own  that  I  suspected  nothing  of  at  the  time, 
that  only  now  becomes  credible  to  me.  She  kept  a 
diary  that  is  still  in  my  possession,  a  diary  of  frag- 
mentary entries  in  a  miscellaneous  collection  of  pocket 
books.  She  put  down  the  texts  of  the  sermons  she 
heard,  and  queer  stiff  little  comments  on  casual 


52        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

visitors, — "Miss  G.  and  much  noisy  shrieking  talk 
about  games  and  such  frivolities  and  croquay.  A.  de- 
lighted and  very  attentive.'9  Such  little  human  entries 
abound.  She  had  an  odd  way  of  never  writing  a 
name,  only  an  initial ;  my  father  is  always  "  A.,"  and 
I  am  always  "  D."  It  is  manifest  she  followed  the 
domestic  events  in  the  life  of  the  Princess  of  Wales, 
who  is  now  Queen  Mother,  with  peculiar  interest  and 
sympathy.  "  Pray  G.  all  may  be  well,"  she  writes  in 
one  such  crisis. 

But  there  are  things  about  myself  that  I  still  find 
too  poignant  to  tell  easily,  certain  painful  and  clumsy 
circumstances  of  my  birth  in  very  great  detail,  the 
distresses  of  my  infantile  ailments.  Then  later  I  find 

such  things  as  this:  "  Heard  D.  s ."  The  "  s  "  is 

evidently  "  swear  " — "  G.  bless  and  keep  my  boy  from 
evil."  And  again,  with  the  thin  handwriting  shaken 
by  distress :  "  D.  would  not  go  to  church,  and  hardened 
his  heart  and  said  wicked  infidel  things,  much  dis- 
respect of  the  clergy.  The  anthem  is  tiresome!  !  ! 
That  men  should  set  up  to  be  wiser  than  their 
maker !  !  ! "  Then  trebly  underlined :  "  I  fear  his 
father's  teaching."  Dreadful  little  tangle  of  misap- 
prehensions and  false  judgments!  More  comforting 
for  me  to  read,  "  D.  very  kind  and  good.  He  grows 
more  thoughtful  every  day."  I  suspect  myself  of  for- 
gotten hypocrisies. 

At  just  one  point  my  mother's  papers  seem  to  dip 
deeper.  I  think  the  death  of  my  father  must  have 
stirred  her  for  the  first  time  for  many  years  to  think 
for  herself.  Even  she  could  not  go  on  living  in  any 
peace  at  all,  believing  that  he  had  indeed  been  flung 
headlong  into  hell.  Of  this  gnawing  solicitude  she 
never  spoke  to  me,  never,  and  for  her  diary  also  she 
could  find  no  phrases.  But  on  a  loose  half-sheet  of 
notepaper  between  its  pages  I  find  this  passage  that 


SCHOLASTIC  53 

follows,  written  very  carefully.  I  do  not  know  whose 
lines  they  are  nor  how  she  came  upon  them.  They 
run: — 

"And  if  there  be  no  meeting  past  the  grave; 
If  all  is  darkness,  silence,  yet  'tis  rest. 
Be  not  afraid  ye  waiting  hearts  that  weep, 
For  God  still  giveth  His  beloved  sleep, 
And  if  an  endless  sleep  He  wills,  so  best." 

That  scrap  of  verse  amazed  me  when  I  read  it. 
I  could  even  wonder  if  my  mother  really  grasped 
the  import  of  what  she  had  copied  out.  It  affected 
me  as  if  a  stone-deaf  person  had  suddenly  turned 
and  joined  in  a  whispered  conversation.  It  set  me 
thinking  how  far  a  mind  in  its  general  effect  quite 
hopelessly  limited,  might  range.  After  that  I  went 
through  all  her  diaries,  trying  to  find  something  more 
than  a  conventional  term  of  tenderness  for  my  father. 
But  I  found  nothing.  And  yet  somehow  there  grew 
upon  me  the  realisation  that  there  had  been  love.  .  .  . 
Her  love  for  me,  on  the  other  hand,  was  abundantly 
expressed. 

I  knew  nothing  of  that  secret  life  of  feeling  at 
the  time;  such  expression  as  it  found  was  all  beyond 
my  schoolboy  range.  I  did  not  know  when  I  pleased 
her  and  I  did  not  know  when  I  distressed  her. 
Chiefly  I  was  aware  of  my  mother  as  rather  dull  com- 
pany, as  a  mind  thorny  with  irrational  conclusions 
and  incapable  of  explication,  as  one  believing  quite 
wilfully  and  irritatingly  in  impossible  things.  So  I 
suppose  it  had  to  be;  life  was  coming  to  me  in  new 
forms  and  with  new  requirements.  It  was  essential 
to  our  situation  that  we  should  fail  to  understand. 
After  this  space  of  years  I  have  come  to  realisations 
and  attitudes  that  dissolve  my  estrangement  from  her, 
I  can  pierce  these  barriers,  I  can  see  her  and  feel  her 


54        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

as  a  loving  and  feeling  and  desiring  and  muddle- 
headed  person.  There  are  times  when  I  would  have 
her  alive  again,  if  only  that  I  might  be  kind  to  her 
for  a  little  while  and  give  her  some  return  for  the 
narrow  intense  affection,  the  tender  desires,  she  evi- 
dently lavished  so  abundantly  on  me.  \  But  then  again 
I  ask  how  I  could  make  that  return?  And  I  realise 
the  futility  of  such  dreaming.  Her  demand  was  rigid, 
and  to  meet  it  I  should  need  to  act  and  lie. 

So  she  whose  blood  fed  me,  whose  body  made  me, 
lies  in  my  memory  as  I  saw  her  last,  fixed,  still,  infi- 
nitely intimate,  infinitely  remote.  .  .  . 

My  own  case  with  my  mother,  however,  does  not 
awaken  the  same  regret  I  feel  when  I  think  of  how 
she  misjudged  and  irked  my  father,  and  turned  his 
weaknesses  into  thorns  for  her  own  tormenting.  I 
wish  I  could  look  back  without  that  little  twinge  to 
two  people  who  were  both  in  their  different  quality 
so  good.  But  goodness  that  is  narrow  is  a  pedestrian 
and  ineffectual  goodness.  Her  attitude  to  my  father 
seems  to  me  one  of  the  essentially  tragic  things  that 
have  come  to  me  personally,  one  of  those  things 
that  nothing  can  transfigure,  that  remain  sorrowful, 
that  I  cannot  soothe  with  any  explanation,  for  as  I 
remember  him  he  was  indeed  the  most  lovable  of 
weak  spasmodic  men.  But  my  mother  had  been 
trained  in  a  hard  and  narrow  system  that  made 
evil  out  of  many  things  not  in  the  least  evil,  and 
inculcated  neither  kindliness  nor  charity.  All  their  es- 
trangement followed  from  that. 

These  cramping  cults  do  indeed  take  an  enormous 
toll  of  human  love  and  happiness,  and  not  only  that 
but  what  we  Machiavellians  must  needs  consider,  they 
make  frightful  breaches  in  human  solidarity.  I  suppose 
I  am  a  deeply  religious  man,  as  men  of  my  quality 
go,  but  I  hate  more  and  more,  as  I  grow  older,  the 


SCHOLASTIC  55 

shadow  of  intolerance  cast  by  religious  organisations. 
All  my  life  has  been  darkened  by  irrational  intolerance, 
by  arbitrary  irrational  prohibitions  and  exclusions. 
Mahometanism  with  its  fierce  proselytism,  has,  I 
suppose,  the  blackest  record  of  uncharitableness,  but 
most  of  the  Christian  sects  are  tainted,  tainted  to  a 
degree  beyond  any  of  the  anterior  paganisms,  with 
this  same  hateful  quality.  It  is  their  exclusive 
claim  that  sends  them  wrong,  the  vain  ambition 
that  inspires  them  all  to  teach  a  uniform  one-sided 
God  and  be  the  one  and  only  gateway  to  salvation. 
Deprecation  of  all  outside  the  household  of  faith, 
an  organised  undervaluation  of  heretical  goodness  and 
lovableness,  follows  necessarily.  Every  petty  difference 
is  exaggerated  to  the  quality  of  a  saving  grace  or  a 
damning  defect.  Elaborate  precautions  are  taken  to 
shield  the  believer's  mind  against  broad  or  amiable 
suggestions;  the  faithful  are  deterred  by  dark  allusions, 
by  sinister  warnings,  from  books,  from  theatres,  from 
worldly  conversation,  from  all  the  kindly  instruments 
that  mingle  human  sympathy.  For  only  by  isolating 
its  flock  can  the  organisation  survive. 

Every  month  there  came  to  my  mother  a  little  maga- 
zine called,  if  I  remember  rightly,  the  Home  Church- 
man, with  the  combined  authority  of  print  and  clerical 
commendation.  It  was  the  most  evil  thing  that  ever 
came  into  the  house,  a  very  devil,  a  thin  little  pamphlet 
with  one  woodcut  illustration  on  the  front  page  of  each 
number;  now  the  uninviting  visage  of  some  exponent 
of  the  real  and  only  doctrine  and  attitudes,  now  some 
coral  strand  in  act  of  welcoming  the  missionaries  of 
God's  mysterious  preferences,  now  a  new  church  in  the 
Victorian  Gothic.  The  vile  rag  it  was !  A  score  of 
vices  that  shun  the  policeman  have  nothing  of  its 
subtle  wickedness.  It  was  an  outrage  upon  the 
natural  kindliness  of  men.  The  contents  were  all 


56        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

admirably  adjusted  to  keep  a  spirit  in  prison.  Their 
force  of  sustained  suggestion  was  tremendous.  There 
would  be  dreadful  intimations  of  the  swift  retribution 
that  fell  upon  individuals  for  Sabbath-breaking,  and 
upon  nations  for  weakening  towards  Ritualism,  or 
treating  Roman  Catholics  as  tolerable  human  beings; 
there  would  be  great  rejoicings  over  the  conversion  of 
alleged  Jews,  and  terrible  descriptions  of  the  death- 
beds of  prominent  infidels  with  boldly  invented  last 
words, — the  most  unscrupulous  lying;  there  would  be 
the  appallingly  edifying  careers  of  "  early  piety " 
lusciously  described,  or  stories  of  condemned  criminals 
who  traced  their  final  ruin  unerringly  to  early  laxities 
of  the  kind  that  leads  people  to  give  up  subscribing  to 
the  Home  Churchman. 

Every  month  that  evil  spirit  brought  about  a  slump 
in  our  mutual  love.  My  mother  used  to  read  the 
thing  and  become  depressed  and  anxious  for  my 
spiritual  welfare,  used  to  be  stirred  to  unintelligent 
pestering.  .  .  . 

§  2 

A  few  years  ago  I  met  the  editor  of  this  same  Home 
Churchman.  It  was  at  one  of  the  weekly  dinners  of 
that  Fleet  Street  dining  club,  the  Blackfriars. 

I  heard  the  paper's  name  with  a  queer  little  shock  and 
surveyed  the  man  with  interest.  No  doubt  he  was  only 
a  successor  of  the  purveyor  of  discords  who  darkened 
my  boyhood.  It  was  amazing  to  find  an  influence  so 
terrible  embodied  in  a  creature  so  palpably  petty.  He 
was  seated  some  way  down  a  table  at  right  angles  to 
the  one  at  which  I  sat,  a  man  of  mean  appearance 
with  a  greyish  complexion,  thin,  with  a  square  nose,  a 
heavy  wiry  moustache  and  a  big  Adam's  apple  sticking 
out  between  the  wings  of  his  collar.  He  ate  with  con- 
siderable appetite  and  unconcealed  relish,  and  as  his 


SCHOLASTIC  57 

jaw  was  underhung,  he  chummed  and  made  the  mous- 
tache wave  like  reeds  in  the  swell  of  a  steamer.  It 
gave  him  a  conscientious  look.  After  dinner  he  a  little 
forced  himself  upon  me.  At  that  time,  though  the 
shadow  of  my  scandal  was  already  upon  me,  I  still 
seemed  to  be  shaping  for  great  successes,  and  he  was 
glad  to  be  in  conversation  with  me  and  anxious  to 
intimate  political  sympathy  and  support.  I  tried  to 
make  him  talk  of  the  Home  Churchman  and  the  kindrd 
publications  he  ran,  but  he  was  manifestly  ashamed  of 
his  job  so  far  as  I  was  concerned. 

"  One  wants,"  he  said,  pitching  himself  as  he  sup- 
posed in  my  key,  "  to  put  constructive  ideas  into  our 
readers,  but  they  are  narrow,  you  know,  very  narrow. 
Very."  He  made  his  moustache  and  lips  express 
judicious  regret.  "One  has  to  consider  them  carefully, 
one  has  to  respect  their  attitudes.  One  dare  not  go 
too  far  with  them.  One  has  to  feel  one's  way." 

He  chummed  and  the  moustache  bristled. 

A  hireling,  beyond  question,  catering  for  a  demand. 
I  gathered  there  was  a  home  in  Tufnell  Park,  and  three 
boys  to  be  fed  and  clothed  and  educated.  .  .  . 

I  had  the  curiosity  to  buy  a  copy  of  his  magazine 
afterwards,  and  it  seemed  much  the  same  sort  of  thing 
that  had  worried  my  mother  in  my  boyhood.  There 
was  the  usual  Christian  hero,  this  time  with  mutton- 
chop  whiskers  and  a  long  bare  upper  lip.  The  Jesuits, 
it  seemed,  were  still  hard  at  it,  and  Heaven  frightfully 
upset  about  the  Sunday  opening  of  museums  and  the 
falling  birth-rate,  and  as  touchy  and  vindictive  as  ever. 
There  were  two  vigorous  paragraphs  upon  the  utter 
damnableness  of  the  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell,  a  contagious 
damnableness  I  gathered,  one  wasn't  safe  within  a  mile 
of  Holborn  Viaduct,  and  a  foul-mouthed  attack  on 
poor  little  Wilkins  the  novelist — who  was  being  baited 
by  the  moralists  at  that  time  for  making  one  of  his 


58        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

women  characters,  not  being  in  holy  wedlock,  desire  a 
baby  and  say  so.     ... 

The  broadening  of  human  thought  is  a  slow  and 
complex  process.  We  do  go  on,  we  do  get  on.  But 
when  one  thinks  that  people  are  living  and  dying  now, 
quarrelling  arid  sulking,  misled  and  misunderstanding, 
vaguely  fearful,  condemning  and  thwarting  one  another 
in  the  close  darknesses  of  these  narrow  cults — Oh,  God ! 
one  wants  a  gale  out  of  Heaven,  one  wants  a  great 
wind  from  the  sea ! 


While  I  lived  at  Penge  two  little  things  happened 
to  me,  trivial  in  themselves  and  yet  in  their  quality 
profoundly  significant.  They  had  this  in  common,  that 
they  pierced  the  texture  of  the  life  I  was  quietly  taking 
for  granted  and  let  me  see  through  it  into  realities — 
realities  I  had  indeed  known  about  before  but  never 
realised.  Each  of  these  experiences  left  me  with  a 
sense  of  shock,  with  all  the  values  in  my  life  perplex- 
ingly  altered,  attempting  readjustment.  One  of  these 
disturbing  and  illuminating  events  was  that  I  was 
robbed  of  a  new  pocket-knife,  and  the  other  that  I  fell 
in  love.  It  was  altogether  surprising  to  me  to  be 
robbed.  You  see,  as  an  only  child  I  had  always  been 
fairly  well  looked  after  and  protected,  and  the  result 
was  an  amazing  confidence  in  the  practical  goodness  of 
the  people  one  met  in  the  world.  I  knew  there  were 
robbers  in  the  world,  just  as  I  knew  there  were  tigers; 
that  I  was  ever  likely  to  meet  robber  or  tiger  face  to 
face  seemed  equally  impossible. 

The  knife  as  I  remember  it  was  a  particularly  jolly 
one  with  all  sorts  of  instruments  in  it,  tweezers  and  a 
thing  for  getting  a  stone  out  of  the  hoof  of  a  horse, 
and  a  corkscrew;  it  had  cost  me  a  carefuly  accumulated 
half-crown,  and  amounted  indeed  to  a  new  experience 


SCHOLASTIC  59 

in  knives.  I  had  had  it  for  two  or  three  days,  and  then 
one  afternoon  I  dropped  it  through  a  hole  in  my  pocket 
on  a  footpath  crossing  a  field  between  Penge  and 
Anerley.  I  heard  it  fall  in  the  way  one  does  without 
at  the  time  appreciating  what  had  happened,  then 
later,  before  I  got  home,  when  my  hand  wandered  into 
my  pocket  to  embrace  the  still  dear  new  possession  I 
found  it  gone,  and  instantly  that  memory  of  something 
hitting  the  ground  sprang  up  into  consciousness.  I 
went  back  and  commenced  a  search.  Almost  immedi- 
ately I  was  accosted  by  the  leader  of  a  little  gang  of 
four  or  five  extremely  dirty  and  ragged  boys  of  assorted 
sizes  and  slouching  carriage  who  were  coming  from  the 
Anerley  direction. 

"  Lost  anythink,  Matey  ?  "  said  he. 

I  explained. 

"  'E's  dropped  'is  knife,"  said  my  interlocutor,  and 
joined  in  the  search. 

"  What  sort  of  'andle  was  it,  Matey  ?  "  said  a  small 
white-faced  sniffing  boy  in  a  big  bowler  hat. 

I  supplied  the  information.  His  sharp  little  face 
scrutinised  the  ground  about  us. 

"  Got  it,"  he  said,  and  pounced. 

"  Give  it  'ere,"  said  the  big  boy  hoarsely,  and 
secured  it. 

I  walked  towards  him  serenely  confident  that  he 
would  hand  it  over  to  me,  and  that  all  was  for  the  best 
in  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds. 

"  No  bloomin'  fear !  "  he  said,  regarding  me  obliquely. 
"Oo  said  it  was  your  knife?  " 

Remarkable  doubts  assailed  me.  "  Of  course  it's  my 
knife,"  I  said.  The  other  boys  gathered  round  me. 

"  This  ain't  your  knife,"  said  the  big  boy,  and  spat 
casually. 

"I  dropped  it  just  now." 

"  Findin's  keepin's,  I  believe/'  said  the  big  boy. 


60        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

"  Nonsense/'  I  said.     "  Give  me  my  knife." 

"  'Ow  many  blades  it  got  ?  " 

"Three." 

"  And  what  sort  of  'andle  ? 

"  Bone." 

"  Got  a  corkscrew  like  ?  " 

"Yes." 

"Ah!     This  ain't  your  knife  no'ow.     See?" 

He  made  no  offer  to  show  it  to  me.     My  breath  went. 

"  Look  here ! "  I  said.  "  I  saw  that  kid  pick  it  up. 
It  is  my  knife." 

"  Rot ! "  said  the  big  boy,  and  slowly,  deliberately 
put  my  knife  into  his  trouser  pocket. 

I  braced  my  soul  for  battle.  All  civilisation  was 
behind  me,  but  I  doubt  if  it  kept  the  colour  in  my 
face.  I  buttoned  my  jacket  and  clenched  my  fists  and 
advanced  on  my  antagonist — he  had,  I  suppose,  the 
advantage  of  two  years  of  age  and  three  inches  of 
height.  "  Hand  over  that  knife,"  I  said. 

Then  one  of  the  smallest  of  the  band  assailed  me 
with  extraordinary  vigour  and  swiftness  from  behind, 
had  an  arm  round  my  neck  and  a  knee  in  my  back 
before  I  had  the  slightest  intimation  of  attack,  and  so 
got  me  down.  "  I  got  'im,  Bill,"  squeaked  this  amazing 
little  ruffian.  My  nose  was  flattened  by  a  dirty  hand, 
and  as  I  struck  out  and  hit  something  like  sacking, 
some  one  kicked  my  elbow.  Two  or  three  seemed  to 
be  at  me  at  the  same  time.  Then  I  rolled  over  and 
sat  up  to  discover  them  all  making  off,  a  ragged  flight, 
footballing  my  cap,  my  City  Merchants'  cap,  amongst 
them.  I  leapt  to  my  feet  in  a  passion  of  indignation 
and  pursued  them. 

But  I  did  not  overtake  them.  We  are  beings  of 
mixed  composition,  and  I  doubt  if  mine  was  a  single- 
minded  pursuit.  I  knew  that  honour  required  me  to 
pursue^  and  I  had  a  vivid  impression  of  having  just 


SCHOLASTIC  61 

ibcen  down  in  the  dust  with  a  very  wiry  and  active  and 
dirty  little  antagonist  of  disagreeable  odour  and  in- 
credible and  incalculable  unscrupulousness,  kneeling  on 
me  and  gripping  my  arm  and  neck.  I  wanted  of  course 
to  be  even  with  him,  but  also  I  doubted  if  catching  him 
would  necessarily  involve  that.  They  kicked  my  cap 
into  the  ditch  at  the  end  of  the  field,  and  made  off  com- 
pactly along  a  cinder  lane  while  I  turned  aside  to  re- 
cover my  dishonoured  headdress.  As  I  knocked  the 
dust  out  of  that  and  out  of  my  jacket,  and  brushed  my 
knees  and  readjusted  my  very  crumpled  collar,  I  tried 
to  focus  this  startling  occurrence  in  my  mind. 

I  had  vague  ideas  of  going  to  a  policeman  or  of 
complaining  at  a  police  station,  but  some  boyish  in- 
stinct against  informing  prevented  that.  No  doubt  I 
entertained  ideas  of  vindictive  pursuit  and  murderous 
reprisals.  And  I  was  acutely  enraged  whenever  I 
thought  of  my  knife.  The  thing  indeed  rankled  in  my 
mind  for  weeks  and  weeks,  and  altered  all  the  flavour  of 
my  world  for  me.  It  was  the  first  time  I  glimpsefl  the 
simple  brute  violence  that  lurks  and  peeps  beneath  our 
civilisation.  A  certain  kindly  complacency  of  attitude 
towards  the  palpably  lower  classes  was  qualified  fo? 
ever. 

§4 

But  the  other  experience  was  still  more  cardinal.  It 
•was  the  first  clear  intimation  of  a  new  motif  in  life, 
the  sex  motif,  that  was  to  rise  and  increase  and  accumu- 
late power  and  enrichment  and  interweave  with  and  at 
last  dominate  all  my  life. 

It  was  when  I  was  nearly  fifteen  this  happened.  It 
is  inseparably  connected  in  my  mind  with  the  dusk  of 
warm  September  evenings.  I  never  met  the  gi<rl  I 
loved  by  daylight,  and  I  have  forgotten  her  name.  It 
was  some  insignificant  name. 

Yet  the  peculiar   quality  of  the  adventure  keeps   it 


62        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

shining  darkly  like  some  deep  coloured  gem  in  the  com- 
mon setting  of  my  memories.  It  came  as  something 
new  and  strange,  something  that  did  not  join  on  to 
anything  else  in  my  life  or  connect  with  any  of  my 
thoughts  or  beliefs  or  habits;  it  was  a  wonder,  a 
mystery,  a  discovery  about  myself,  a  discovery  about 
the  whole  world.  Only  in  after  years  did  sexual  feeling 
lose  that  isolation  and  spread  itself  out  to  illuminate 
and  pervade  and  at  last  possess  the  whole  broad  vision 
of  life. 

It  was  in  that  phase  of  an  urban  youth's  develop- 
ment, the  phase  of  the  cheap  cigarette,  that  this  thing 
happened.  One  evening  I  came  by  chance  on  a  number 
of  young  people  promenading  by  the  light  of  a  row  of 
shops  towards  Beckington,  and,  with  all  the  glory  of 
a  glowing  cigarette  between  my  lips,  I  joined  their 
strolling  number.  These  twilight  parades  of  young 
people,  youngsters  chiefly  of  the  lower  middle-class,  are 
one  of  the  odd  social  developments  of  the  great  subur- 
ban growths — unkindly  critics,  blind  to  the  inner  mean- 
ings of  things,  call  them,  I  believe,  Monkeys'  Parades — 
the  shop  apprentices,  the  young  work  girls,  the  boy 
clerks  and  so  forth,  stirred  by  mysterious  intimations, 
spend  their  first-earned  money  upon  collars  and  ties, 
chiffon  hats,  smart  lace  collars,  walking-sticks,  sunshades 
or  cigarettes,  and  come  valiantly  into  the  vague  trans- 
figuring mingling  of  gaslight  and  evening,  to  walk  up 
and  down,  to  eye  meaningly,  even  to  accost  and  make 
friends.  It  is  a  queer  instinctive  revolt  from  the  narrow 
limited  friendless  homes  in  which  so  many  find  them- 
selves, a  going  out  towards  something,  romance  if  you 
will,  beauty,  that  has  suddenly  become  a  need — a  need 
that  hitherto  has  lain  dormant  and  unsuspected.  They 
promenade. 

Vulgar! — it  is  as  vulgar  as  the  spirit  that  calls  the 
moth  abroad  in  the  evening  and  lights  the  body  of  the 


SCHOLASTIC  63 

glow-worm  in  the  night.  I  made  my  way  through  the 
throng,  a  little  contemptuously  as  became  a  public 
schoolboy,  my  hands  in  my  pockets — none  of  your 
cheap  canes  for  me ! — and  very  careful  of  the  lie  of  my 
cigarette  upon  my  lips.  And  two  girls  passed  me,  one 
a  little  taller  than  the  other,  with  dim  warm-tinted  faces 
under  clouds  of  dark  hair  and  with  dark  eyes  like  pools 
"reflecting  stars. 

I  half  turned,  and  the  shorter  one  glanced  back  at 
me  over  her  shoulder — I  could  draw  you  now  the  pose 
of  her  cheek  and  neck  and  shoulder — and  instantly  I 
was  as  passionately  in  love  with  the  girl  as  I  have  ever 
"been  before  or  since,  as  any  man  ever  was  with  any 
woman.  I  turned  about  and  followed  them,  I  flung 
away  my  cigarette  ostentatiously  and  lifted  my  school 
cap  and  spoke  to  them. 

The  girl  answered  shyly  with  her  dark  eyes  on  my 
face.  What  I  said  and  what  she  said  I  cannot  remem- 
ber, but  I  have  little  doubt  it  was  something  absolutely 
vapid.  It  really  did  not  matter;  the  thing  was  we  had 
met.  I  felt  as  I  think  a  new-hatched  moth  must  feel 
when  suddenly  its  urgent  headlong  searching  brings  it 
in  tremulous  amazement  upon  its  mate. 

We  met,  covered  from  each  other,  with  all  the  nets 
of  civilisation  keeping  us  apart.  We  walked  side  by 
side. 

It  led  to  scarcely  more  than  that.  I  think  we  met 
four  or  five  times  altogether,  and  always  with  her  nearly 
silent  elder  sister  on  the  other  side  of  her.  We  walked 
on  the  last  two  occasions  arm  in  arm,  furtively  caress- 
ing each  other's  hands,  we  went  away  from  the  glare 
of  the  shops  into  the  quiet  roads  of  villadom,  and  there 
we  whispered  instead  of  talking  and  looked  closely  into 
one  another's  warm  and  shaded  face.  "  Dear,"  I 
whispered  very  daringly,  and  she  answered,  "  Dear ! " 
We  had  a  vague  sense  that  we  wanted  more,  of  that 


64        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

quality  of  intimacy  and  more.  We  wanted  each  other 
as  one  wants  beautiful  music  again  or  to  breathe  again 
the  scent  of  flowers. 

And  that  is  all  there  was  between  us.  The  events 
are  nothing,  the  thing  that  matters  is  the  way  in  which 
this  experience  stabbed  through  the  common  stuff  of 
life  and  left  it  pierced,  with  a  light,  with  a  huge  new 
interest  shining  through  the  rent. 

When  I  think  of  it  I  can  recall  even  now  the  warm 
mystery  of  her  face,  her  lips  a  little  apart,  lips  that  I 
never  kissed,  her  soft  shadowed  throat,  and  I  feel  again 
the  sensuous  stir  of  her  proximity.  .  .  . 

Those  two  girls  never  told  me  their  surname  nor  let 
me  approach  their  house.  They  made  me  leave  them 
at  the  corner  of  a  road  of  small  houses  near  Penge 
Station.  And  quite  abruptly,  without  any  intimation, 
they  vanished  and  came  to  the  meeting  place  no  more, 
they  vanished  as  a  moth  goes  out  of  a  window  into  the 
night,  and  left  me  possessed  of  an  intolerable 
want.  .  .  . 

The  affair  pervaded  my  existence  for  many  weeks. 
I  could  not  do  my  work  and  I  could  not  rest  at  home. 
Night  after  night  I  promenaded  up  and  down  that 
Monkeys'  Parade  full  of  an  unappeasable  desire,  with  a 
thwarted  sense  of  something  just  begun  that  ought  to 
have  gone  on.  I  went  backwards  and  forwards  on  the 
way  to  the  vanishing  place,  and  at  last  explored  the  for- 
bidden road  that  had  swallowed  them  up.  But  I  never 
saw  her  again,  except  that  later  she  came  to  me>  my 
symbol  of  womanhood,  in  dreams.  How  my  blood  was 
stirred!  I  lay  awake  of  nights  whispering  in  the  dark- 
ness for  Jier.  I  prayed  for  her. 

Indeed  that  girl,  who  probably  forgot  the  last 
vestiges  of  me  when  her  first  real  kiss  came  to  her, 
ruled  and  haunted  me,  gave  a  Queen  to  my  imagination 
and  a  texture  to  all  my  desires  until  I  became  a  man. 


SCHOLASTIC  05 

I  generalised  her  at  last.  I  suddenly  discovered 
that  poetry  was  about  her  and  that  she  was  the  key  to 
all  that  had  hitherto  seemed  nonsense  about  love.  I 
took  to  reading  novels,  and  if  the  heroine  could  not 
possibly  be  like  her,  dusky  and  warm  and  starlike,  I 
put  the  book  aside.  .  .  . 

I  hesitate  and  add  here  one  other  confession.  I  want 
to  tell  this  thing  because  it  seems  to  me  we  are  alto- 
gether too  restrained  and  secretive  about  such  matters. 
The  cardinal  thing  in  life  sneaks  in  to  us  darkly  and 
shamefully  like  a  thief  in  the  night. 

One  day  during  my  Cambridge  days — it  must  have 
been  in  my  first  year  before  I  knew  Hatherleigh — I 
saw  in  a  print-shop  window  near  the  Strand  an  en- 
graving of  a  girl  that  reminded  me  sharply  of  Penge 
and  its  dusky  encounter.  It  was  just  a  half  length  of 
a  bare-shouldered,  bare-breasted  Oriental  with  arms 
akimbo,  smiling  faintly.  I  looked  at  it,  went  my  way, 
then  turned  back  and  bought  it.  I  felt  I  must  have  it. 
The  odd  thing  is  that  I  was  more  than  a  little  shame- 
faced about  it.  I  did  not  have  it  framed  and  hung  in 
my  room  open  to  the  criticism  of  my  friends,  but  I 
kept  it  in  the  drawer  of  my  writing-table.  And  I  kept 
that  drawer  locked  for  a  year.  It  speedily  merged 
•with  and  became  identified  with  the  dark  girl  of  Penge. 
That  engraving  became  in  a  way  my  mistress.  Often 
when  I  had  sported  my  oak  and  was  supposed  to  be 
reading,  I  was  sitting  with  it  before  me. 

Obeying  some  instinct  I  kept  the  thing  very  secret 
indeed.  For  a  time  nobody  suspected  what  was  locked 
in  my  drawer  nor  what  was  locked  in  me.  I  seemed 
as  sexless  as  my  world  required, 

§   5 

These  things  stabbed  througH  my  life,  intimations 
of  things  above  and  below  and  before  me.  They  had 
an  air  of  being  no  more  than  incidents,  interruptions. 


66        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

The  broad  substance  of  my  existence  at  this  time 
was  the  City  Merchants  School.  Home  was  a  place 
where  I  slept  and  read,  and  the  mooning  explorations 
of  the  south-eastern  postal  district  which  occupied  the 
restless  evenings  and  spare  days  of  my  vacations  mere 
interstices,  giving  glimpses  of  enigmatical  lights  and 
distant  spaces  between  the  woven  threads  of  a  school- 
boy's career.  School  life  began  for  me  every  morning 
at  Herne  Hill,  for  there  I  was  joined  by  three  or  four 
other  boys  and  the  rest  of  the  way  we  went  together. 
Most  of  the  streets  and  roads  we  traversed  in  our  morn- 
ing's walk  from  Victoria  are  still  intact,  the  storms  of 
rebuilding  that  have  submerged  so  much  of  my  boy- 
hood's London  have  passed  and  left  them,  and  I  have 
revived  the  impression  of  them  again  and  again  in  re- 
cent years  as  I  have  clattered  dinnerward  in  a  hansom 
or  hummed  along  in  a  motor  cab  to  some  engagement. 
The  main  gate  still  looks  out  with  the  same  expression 
of  ancient  well-proportioned  kindliness  upon  St.  Mar- 
garet's Close.  There  are  imposing  new  science  labora- 
tories in  Chambers  Street  indeed,  but  the  old  playing 
fields  are  unaltered  except  for  the  big  electric  trams 
that  go  droning  and  spitting  blue  flashes  along  the 
western  boundary.  I  know  Ratten,  the  new  Head, 
very  well,  but  I  have  not  been  inside  the  school  to  see 
if  it  has  changed  at  all  since  I  went  up  to  Cambridge. 

I  took  all  they  put  before  us  very  readily  as  a  boy, 
for  I  had  a  mind  of  vigorous  appetite,  but  since  I  have 
grown  mentally  to  man's  estate  and  developed  a  more 
and  more  comprehensive  view  of  our  national  process 
and  our  national  needs,  I  am  more  and  more  struck  by 
the  oddity  of  the  educational  methods  pursued,  their 
aimless  disconnectedness  from  the  constructive  forces  in 
the  community.  I  suppose  if  we  are  to  view  the  public 
school  as  anything  more  than  an  institution  that  has 
just  chanced  to  happen,  we  must  treat  it  as  having 


SCHOLASTIC  67 

a  definite  function  towards  the  general  scheme  of  the 
nation,  as  being  in  a  sense  designed  to  take  the  crude 
young  male  of  the  more  or  less  responsible  class,  to 
correct  his  harsh  egotisms,  broaden  his  outlook,  give 
him  a  grasp  of  the  contemporary  developments  he  will 
presently  be  called  upon  to  influence  and  control,  and 
send  him  on  to  the  university  to  be  made  a  leading 
and  ruling  social  man.  It  is  easy  enough  to  carp  at 
schoolmasters  and  set  up  for  an  Educational  Reformer, 
I  know,  but  still  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel  how  in- 
finitely more  effectually — given  certain  impossibilities 
perhaps — the  job  might  be  done. 

My  memory  of  school  has  indeed  no  hint  whatever 
of  that  quality  of  elucidation  it  seems  reasonable  to 
demand  from  it.  Here  all  about  me  was  London,  a 
vast  inexplicable  being,  a  vortex  of  gigantic  forces, 
that  filled  and  overwhelmed  me  with  impressions,  that 
stirred  my  imagination  to  a  perpetual  vague  enquiry; 
and  my  school  not  only  offered  no  key  to  it,  but  had 
practically  no  comment  to  make  upon  it  at  all.  We 
were  within  three  miles  of  Westminster  and  Charing 
Cross,  the  government  offices  of  a  fifth  of  mankind  were 
all  within  an  hour's  stroll,  great  economic  changes  were 
going  on  under  our  eyes,  now  the  hoardings  flamed 
with  election  placards,  now  the  Salvation  Army  and  now 
the  unemployed  came  trailing  in  procession  through  the 
winter-grey  streets,  now  the  newspaper  placards  outside 
news-shops  told  of  battles  in  strange  places,  now  of 
amazing  discoveries,  now  of  sinister  crimes,  abject 
squalor  and  poverty,  imperial  splendour  and  luxury, 
Buckingham  Palace,  Rotten  Row,  Mayfair,  the  slums 
of  Pimlico,  garbage-littered  streets  of  bawling  coster- 
mongers,  the  inky  silver  of  the  barge-laden  Thames 
— such  was  the  background  of  our  days.  We  went 
across  St.  Margaret's  Close  and  through  the  school  gate 
into  a  quiet  puerile  world  apart  from  all  these  things. 


68        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

We  joined  in  the  earnest  acquirement  of  all  that  was 
necessary  for  Greek  epigrams  and  Latin  verse,  and  fo* 
the  rest  played  games.  We  dipped  down  into  some- 
thing clear  and  elegantly  proportioned  and  time-worn 
and  for  all  its  high  resolve  of  stalwart  virility  a  little 
feeble,  like  our  blackened  and  decayed  portals  by  Inigo 
Jones. 

Within,  we  were  taught  as  the  chief  subjects  of 
instruction,  Latin  and  Greek.  We  were  taught  very 
badly  because  the  men  who  taught  us  did  not  habitually 
use  either  of  these  languages,  nobody  uses  them  any 
more  now  except  perhaps  for  the  Latin  of  a  few 
Levantine  monasteries.  At  the  utmost  our  men  read 
them.  We  were  taught  these  languages  because  long 
ago  Latin  had  been  the  language  of  civilisation;  the 
one  way  of  escape  from  the  narrow  and  localised  life 
had  lain  in  those  days  through  Latin,  and  afterwards 
Greek  had  come  in  as  the  vehicle  of  a  flood  of  new  and 
amazing  ideas.  Once  these  two  languages  had  been  the 
sole  means  of  initiation  to  the  detached  criticism  and 
partial  comprehension  of  the  world.  I  can  imagine  the 
fierce  zeal  of  our  first  Heads,  Gardener  and  Roper, 
teaching  Greek  like  passionate  missionaries,  as  a  pro- 
gressive Chinaman  might  teach  English  to  the  boys  of 
Pekin,  clumsily,  impatiently,  with  rod  and  harsh 
urgency,  but  sincerely,  patriotically,  because  they  felt 
that  behind  it  lay  revelations,  the  irresistible  stimulus 
to  a  new  phase  of  history.  That  was  long  ago.  A  new 
great  world,  a  vaster  Imperialism  had  arisen  about  the 
school,  had  assimilated  all  these  amazing  and  incredible 
ideas,  had  gone  on  to  new  and  yet  more  amazing  de- 
velopments of  its  own.  But  the  City  Merchants  School 
still  made  the  substance  of  its  teaching  Latin  and 
Greek,  still,  with  no  thought  of  rotating  crops,  sowed 
in  a  dream  amidst  the  harvesting. 

There  is  no  fierceness  left  in  the  teaching  now.    Just 


SCHOLASTIC  69 

after  I  went  up  to  Trinity,  Gates,  our  Head,  wrote  a 
review  article  in  defence  of  our  curriculum.  In  this, 
among  other  indiscretions,  he  asserted  that  it  was  im- 
possible to  write  good  English  without  an  illuminating 
knowledge  of  the  classic  tongues,  and  he  split  an  in- 
finitive and  failed  to  button  up  a  sentence  in  saying  so. 
His  main  argument  conceded  every  objection  a  reason- 
able person  could  make  to  the  City  Merchants'  cur- 
riculum. He  admitted  that  translation  had  now  placed 
all  the  wisdom  of  the  past  at  a  common  man's  disposal, 
that  scarcely  a  field  of  endeavour  remained  in  which 
modern  work  had  not  long  since  passed  beyond  the 
ancient  achievement.  He  disclaimed  any  utility.  But 
there  was,  he  said,  a  peculiar  magic  in  these  gram- 
matical exercises  no  other  subjects  of  instruction  pos- 
sessed. Nothing  else  provided  the  same  strengthening 
and  orderly  discipline  for  the  mind. 

He  said  that,  knowing  the  Senior  Classics  he  did, 
himself  a  Senior  Classic! 

Yet  in  a  dim  confused  way  I  think  he  was  making 
out  a  case.  In  schools  as  we  knew  them,  and  with  the 
sort  of  assistant  available,  the  sort  of  assistant  who  has 
been  trained  entirely  on  the  old  lines,  he  could  see  no 
other  teaching  so  effectual  in  developing  attention,  re- 
straint, sustained  constructive  effort  and  various  yet 
systematic  adjustment.  And  that  was  as  far  as  his 
imagination  could  go. 

It  is  infinitely  easier  to  begin  organised  human 
affairs  than  end  them;  the  curriculum  and  the  social 
organisation  of  the  English  public  school  are  the  crown- 
ing instances  of  that.  They  go  on  because  they  have 
begun.  Schools  are  not  only  immortal  institutions  but 
reproductive  ones.  Our  founder,  Jabez  Arvon,  knew 
nothing,  I  am  sure,  of  Gates'  pedagogic  values  and 
would,  I  feel  certain,  have  dealt  with  them  disrespect- 
fully. But  public  schools  and  university  colleges 


70        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

sprang  into  existence  correlated,  the  scholars  went  on 
to  the  universities  and  came  back  to  teach  the  schools, 
to  teach  as  they  themselves  had  been  taught,  before 
they  had  ever  made  any  real  use  of  the  teaching;  the 
crowd  of  boys  herded  together,  a  crowd  perpetually 
renewed  and  unbrokenly  the  same,  adjusted  itself  by 
means  of  spontaneously  developed  institutions.  In  a 
century,  by  its  very  success,  this  revolutionary  innova- 
tion of  Renascence  public  schools  had  become  an  im- 
mense tradition  woven  closely  into  the  fabric  of  the 
national  life.  Intelligent  and  powerful  people  ceased 
to  talk  Latin  or  read  Greek,  they  had  got  what  was 
wanted,  but  that  only  left  the  schoolmaster  the  freer 
to  elaborate  his  point.  Since  most  men  of  any  im- 
portance or  influence  in  the  country  had  been  through 
the  mill,  it  was  naturally  a  little  difficult  to  persuade 
them  that  it  was  not  quite  the  best  and  most  ennobling 
mill  the  wit  of  man  could  devise.  And,  moreover,  they 
did  not  want  their  children  made  strange  to  them. 
There  was  all  the  machinery  and  all  the  men  needed  to 
teach  the  old  subjects,  and  none  to  teach  whatever  new 
the  critic  might  propose.  Such  science  instruction  as 
my  father  gave  seemed  indeed  the  uninviting  alternative 
to  the  classical  grind.  It  was  certainly  an  altogether 
inferior  instrument  at  that  time. 

So  it  was  I  occupied  my  mind  with  the  exact  study 
of  dead  languages  for  seven  long  years.  It  was  the 
Strangest  of  detachments.  We  would  sit  under  the 
desk  of  such  a  master  as  Topham  like  creatures  who 
had  fallen  into  an  enchanted  pit,  and  he  would  do 
his  considerable  best  to  work  us  up  to  enthusiasm  for, 
let  us  say,  a  Greek  play.  If  we  flagged  he  would 
lash  himself  to  revive  us.  He  would  walk  about  the 
class-room  mouthing  great  lines  in  a  rich  roar,  and 
asking  us  with  a  flushed  face  and  shining  eyes  if  it 
was  not  "glorious."  The  very  sight  of  Greek  letter* 


SCHOLASTIC  71 

brings  back  to  me  the  dingy,  faded,  ink-splashed 
quality  of  our  class-room,  the  banging  of  books,  Top- 
ham's  disordered  hair,  the  sheen  of  his  alpaca  gown, 
his  deep  unmusical  intonations  and  the  wide  striding 
of  his  creaking  boots.  Glorious !  And  being  plastic 
human  beings  we  would  consent  that  it  was  glorious, 
and  some  of  us  even  achieved  an  answering  reverbera- 
tion and  a  sympathetic  flush.  I  at  times  responded 
freely.  We  all  accepted  from  him  unquestioningly 
that  these  melodies,  these  strange  sounds,  exceeded 
any  possibility  of  beauty  that  lay  in  the  Gothic  intri- 
cacy, the  splash  and  glitter,  the  jar  and  recovery,  the 
stabbing  lights,  the  heights  and  broad  distances  of  our 
English  tongue.  That  indeed  was  the  chief  sin  of  him. 
It  was  not  that  he  was  for  Greek  and  Latin,  but  that 
he  was  fiercely  against  every  beauty  that  was  neither 
classic  nor  deferred  to  classical  canons. 

And  what  exactly  did  we  make  of  it,  we  seniors  who 
understood  it  best?  We  visualised  dimly  through 
that  dust  and  the  grammatical  difficulties,  the  spectacle 
of  the  chorus  chanting  grotesquely,  helping  out  pro- 
tagonist and  antagonist,  masked  and  buskined,  with  the 
telling  of  incomprehensible  parricides,  of  inexplicable 
incest,  of  gods  faded  beyond  symbolism,  of  that  Relent- 
less Law  we  did  not  believe  in  for  a  moment,  that  no 
modern  western  European  can  believe  in.  We  thought 
of  the  characters  in  the  unconvincing  wigs  and  costumes 
of  our  school  performance.  No  Gilbert  Murray  had 
come  as  yet  to  touch  these  things  to  life  again.  It  was 
like  the  ghost  of  an  antiquarian's  toy  theatre,  a  ghost 
that  crumbled  and  condensed  into  a  gritty  dust  of  con- 
struing as  one  looked  at  it. 

Marks,  shindies,  prayers  and  punishments,  all 
flavoured  with  the  leathery  stuffiness  of  time-worn  Big 
Hall.  .  .  . 

And    then    out    one    would    come    through    our    grey 


72        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

old  gate  into  the  evening  light  and  the  spectacle  of 
London  hurrying  like  a  cataract,  London  in  black  and 
brown  and  blue  and  gleaming  silver,  roaring  like  the 
very  loom  of  Time.  We  came  out  into  the  new  world 
no  teacher  has  yet  had  the  power  and  courage  to  grasp 
and  expound.  Life  and  death  sang  all  about  one,  joys 
and  fears  on  such  a  scale,  in  such  an  intricacy  as 
never  Greek  nor  Roman  knew.  The  interminable  pro- 
cession of  horse  omnibuses  went  lumbering  past,  bear- 
ing countless  people  we  knew  not  whence,  we  knew 
not  whither.  Hansoms  clattered,  foot  passengers 
jostled  one,  a  thousand  appeals  of  shop  and  hoarding 
caught  the  eye.  The  multi-coloured  lights  of  window 
and  street  mingled  with  the  warm  glow  of  the  declining 
day  under  the  softly  flushing  London  skies;  the  ever- 
changing  placards,  the  shouting  news-vendors,  told  of 
a  kaleidoscopic  drama  all  about  the  globe.  One  did 
not  realise  what  had  happened  to  us,  but  the  voice  of 
Topham  was  suddenly  drowned  and  lost,  he  and  his 
minute,  remote  gesticulations.  .  .  . 

That  submerged  and  isolated  curriculum  did  not 
even  join  on  to  living  interests  where  it  might  have 
done  so.  We  were  left  absolutely  to  the  hints  of 
the  newspapers,  to  casual  political  speeches,  to  the 
cartoons  of  the  comic  papers  or  a  chance  reading  of 
some  Socialist  pamphlet  for  any  general  ideas  whatever 
about  the  huge  swirling  world  process  in  which  we 
found  ourselves.  I  always  look  back  with  particular 
exasperation  to  the  cessation  of  our  modern  history 
at  the  year  1815.  There  it  pulled  up  abruptly,  as 
though  it  had  come  upon  something  indelicate.  .  .  . 

But,  after  all,  what  would  Topham  or  Flack  have 
made  of  the  huge  adjustments  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury? Flack  was  the  chief  cricketer  on  the  staff;  he 
belonged  to  that  great  cult  which  pretends  that  the 
place  of  this  or  that  county  in  the  struggle  for  the 


SCHOLASTIC  73 

championship  is  a  matter  of  supreme  importance  to 
boys.  He  obliged  us  to  affect  a  passionate  interest  in 
the  progress  of  county  matches,  to  work  up  unnatural 
enthusiasms.  What  a  fuss  there  would  be  when  some 
well-trained  boy,  panting  as  if  from  Marathon,  ap- 
peared with  an  evening  paper !  "  I  say,  you  chaps, 
Middlesex  all  out  for  a  hundred  and  five !  " 

Under  Flack's  pressure  I  became,  I  confess,  a  cricket 
humbug  of  the  first  class.  I  applied  myself  industriously 
year  by  year  to  mastering  scores  and  averages;  I  pre- 
tended that  Lords  or  the  Oval  were  the  places  nearest 
Paradise  for  me.  (I  never  went  to  either.)  Through 
a  slight  mistake  about  the  county  boundary  I  adopted 
Surrey  for  my  loyalty,  though  as  a  matter  of  fact  we 
were  by  some  five  hundred  yards  or  so  in  Kent.  It  did 
quite  as  well  for  my  purposes.  I  bowled  rather  straight 
and  fast,  and  spent  endless  hours  acquiring  the  skill  to 
bowl  Flack  out.  He  was  a  bat  in  the  Corinthian  style, 
rich  and  voluminous,  and  succumbed  very  easily  to  a 
low  shooter  or  an  unexpetced  Yorker,  but  usually  he 
was  caught  early  by  long  leg.  The  difficulty  was  to 
bowl  him  before  he  got  caught.  He  loved  to  lift  a 
ball  to  leg.  After  one  had  clean  bowled  him  at  the 
practice  nets  one  deliberately  gave  him  a  ball  to  leg 
just  to  make  him  feel  nice  again. 

Flack  went  about  a  world  of  marvels  dreaming  of 
leg  hits.  He  has  been  observed,  going  across  the  Park 
on  his  way  to  his  highly  respectable  club  in  Piccadilly, 
to  break  from  profound  musings  into  a  strange  brief 
dance  that  ended  with  an  imaginary  swipe  with  his 
umbrella,  a  roofer,  over  the  trees  towards  Buckingham 
Palace.  The  hit  accomplished,  Flack  resumed  his  way. 

Inadequately  instructed  foreigners  would  pass  him 
in  terror,  needlessly  alert. 

§  6 
These    schoolmasters    move   through   my   memory    as 


74        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

always  a  little  distant  and  more  than  a  little  incom- 
prehensible. Except  when  they  wore  flannels,  I  saw 
them  almost  always  in  old  college  caps  and  gowns,  a 
uniform  which  greatly  increased  their  detachment  from 
the  world  of  actual  men.  Gates,  the  head,  was  a  lean 
loose-limbed  man,  rather  stupid  I  discovered  when  I 
reached  the  Sixth  and  came  into  contact  with  him,  but 
honest,  simple  and  very  eager  to  be  liberal-minded. 
He  was  bald,  with  an  almost  conical  baldness,  with  a 
grizzled  pointed  beard,  small  featured  and,  under  the 
stresses  of  a  Zeitgeist  that  demanded  liberality,  with 
an  expression  of  puzzled  but  resolute  resistance  to  his 
own  unalterable  opinions.  He  made  a  tall  dignified 
figure  in  his  gown.  In  my  junior  days  he  spoke  to 
me  only  three  or  four  times,  and  then  he  annoyed  me 
by  giving  me  a  wrong  surname;  it  was  a  sore  point 
because  I  was  an  outsider  and  not  one  of  the  old 
school  families,  the  Shoesmiths,  the  Naylors,  the  Mark- 
lows,  the  Tophams,  the  Pevises  and  suchlike,  who  came 
generation  after  generation.  I  recall  him  most  vividly 
against  the  background  of  faded  brown  book-backs 
in  the  old  library  in  which  we  less  destructive  seniors 
were  trusted  to  work,  with  the  light  from  the  stained- 
glass  window  falling  in  coloured  patches  on  his  face. 
It  gave  him  the  appearance  of  having  no  colour  of  his 
own.  He  had  a  habit  of  scratching  the  beard  on  his 
cheek  as  he  talked,  and  he  used  to  come  and  consult 
us  about  things  and  invariably  do  as  we  said.  That, 
in  his  phraseology,  was  "  maintaining  the  traditions  of 
the  school." 

He  had  indeed  an  effect  not  of  a  man  directing  a 
school,  but  of  a  man  captured  and  directed  by  a  school. 
Dead  and  gone  Elizabethans  had  begotten  a  monster 
that  could  carry  him  about  in  its  mouth. 

Yet  being  a  man,  as  I  say,  with  his  hair  a  little 
stirred  by  a  Zeitgeist  that  made  for  change,  Gates  did 


SCHOLASTIC  75 

at  times  display  a  disposition  towards  developments. 
City  Merchants  had  no  modern  side,  and  utilitarian 
spirits  were  carping  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  and  else- 
where at  the  omissions  from  our  curriculum,  and  par- 
ticularly at  our  want  of  German.  Moreover,  four 
classes  still  worked  together  with  much  clashing  and 
uproar  in  the  old  Big  Hall  that  had  once  held  in  a 
common  tumult  the  entire  school.  Gates  used  to  come 
and  talk  to  us  older  fellows  about  these  things. 

"  I  don't  wish  to  innovate  unduly,"  he  used  to  say. 
"  But  we  ought  to  get  in  some  German,  you  know, — 
for  those  who  like  it.  The  army  men  will  be  wanting 
it  some  of  these  days." 

He  referred  to  the  organisation  of  regular  evening 
preparation  for  the  lower  boys  in  Big  Hall  as  a  "  revolu- 
tionary change/'  but  he  achieved  it,  and  he  declared 
he  began  the  replacement  of  the  hacked  wooden  tables, 
at  which  the  boys  had  worked  since  Tudor  days,  by 
sloping  desks  with  safety  inkpots  and  scientifically 
adjustable  seats,  "with  grave  misgivings."  And  though 
he  never  birched  a  boy  in  his  life,  and  was,  I  am  con- 
vinced, morally  incapable  of  such  a  scuffle,  he  retained 
the  block  and  birch  in  the  school  through  all  his  term 
of  office,  and  spoke  at  the  Headmasters'  Conference  in 
temperate  approval  of  corporal  chastisement,  compar- 
ing it,  dear  soul!  to  the  power  of  the  sword.  .  .  . 

I  wish  I  could,  in  some  measure  and  without  tedious- 
ness,  convey  the  effect  of  his  discourses  to  General 
Assembly  in  Big  Hall.  But  that  is  like  trying  to  draw 
the  obverse  and  reverse  of  a  sixpence  worn  to  complete 
illegibility.  His  tall  fine  figure  stood  high  on  the  dai's, 
his  thoughtful  tenor  filled  the  air  as  he  steered  his 
hazardous  way  through  sentences  that  dragged  incon- 
clusive tails  and  dropped  redundant  prepositions.  And 
he  pleaded  ever  so  urgently,  ever  so  finely,  that  what 
we  all  knew  for  Sin  was  sinful^  and  on  the  whole  best 


76        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

avoided  altogether,  and  so  went  on  with  deepening 
notes  and  even  with  short  arresting  gestures  of  the 
right  arm  and  hand,  to  stir  and  exhort  us  towards 
goodness,  towards  that  modern,  unsectarian  goodness, 
goodness  in  general  and  nothing  in  particular,  which 
the  Zeitgeist  seemed  to  indicate  in  those  transitional 
years. 

§  7 

The  school  never  quite  got  hold  of  me.  Partly  I 
think  that  was  because  I  was  a  day-boy  and  so  freer 
than  most  of  the  boys,  partly  because  of  a  tempera- 
mental disposition  to  see  things  in  my  own  way  and 
have  my  private  dreams,  partly  because  I  was  a  little 
antagonised  by  the  family  traditions  that  ran  through 
the  school.  I  was  made  to  feel  at  first  that  I  was  a 
rank  outsider,  and  I  never  quite  forgot  it.  I  suffered 
very  little  bullying,  and  I  never  had  a  fight — in  all  my 
time  there  were  only  three  fights — but  I  followed  my 
own  curiosities.  I  was  already  a  very  keen  theologian 
and  politician  before  I  was  fifteen.  I  was  also  intensely 
interested  in  modern  warfare.  I  read  the  morning 
papers  in  the  Reading  Room  during  the  midday  recess, 
never  missed  the  illustrated  weeklies,  and  often  when  I 
could  afford  it  I  bought  a  Pall  Mall  Gazette  on  my 
way  home. 

I  do  not  think  that  I  was  very  exceptional  in  that; 
most  intelligent  boys,  I  believe,  want  naturally  to  be 
men,  and  are  keenly  interested  in  men's  affairs.  There 
is  not  the  universal  passion  for  a  magnified  puerility 
among  them  it  is  customary  to  assume.  I  was  indeed  a 
voracious  reader  of  everything  but  boys'  books — which 
I  detested — and  fiction.  I  read  histories,  travel,  popu- 
lar science  and  controversy  with  particular  zest,  and  I 
loved  maps.  School  work  and  school  games  were  quite 
subordinate  affairs  for  me.  I  worked  well  and  made  a 


SCHOLASTIC  77 

passable  figure  at  games,  and  I  do  not  think  I  was 
abnormally  insensitive  to  the  fine  quality  of  our  school, 
to  the  charm  of  its  mediaeval  nucleus,  its  Gothic  clois- 
ters, its  scraps  of  Palladian  and  its  dignified  Georgian 
extensions;  the  contrast  of  the  old  quiet,  that  in  spite 
of  our  presence  pervaded  it  everywhere,  with  the  rush- 
ing and  impending  London  all  about  it,  was  indeed  a 
continual  pleasure  to  me.  But  these  things  were  cer- 
tainly not  the  living  and  central  interests  of  my  life. 

I  had  to  conceal  my  wider  outlook  to  a  certain  extent 
— from  the  masters  even  more  than  from  the  boys. 
Indeed  I  only  let  myself  go  freely  with  one  boy,  Brit- 
ten, my  especial  chum,  the  son  of  the  Agent-General 
for  East  Australia.  We  two  discovered  in  a  chance 
conversation  a  propos  of  a  map  in  the  library  that  we 
were  both  of  us  curious  why  there  were  Malays  in 
Madagascar,  and  how  the  Mecca  pilgrims  came  from 
the  East  Indies  before  steamships  were  available. 
Neither  of  us  had  suspected  that  there  was  any  one  at 
all  in  the  school  who  knew  or  cared  a  rap  about  the 
Indian  Ocean,  except  as  water  on  the  way  to  India, 
But  Britten  had  come  up  through  the  Suez  Canal,  and 
his  ship  had  spoken  a  pilgrim  ship  on  the  way.  It 
gave  him  a  startling  quality  of  living  knowledge.  From 
these  pilgrims  we  got  to  a  comparative  treatment  of 
religions,  and  from  that,  by  a  sudden  plunge,  to  en- 
tirely sceptical  and  disrespectful  confessions  concern- 
ing Gates'  last  outbreak  of  simple  piety  in  School  As- 
sembly. We  became  congenial  intimates  from  that 
hour. 

The  discovery  of  Britten  happened  to  me  when  we 
were  both  in  the  Lower  Fifth.  Previously  there  had 
been  a  watertight  compartment  between  the  books  I 
read  and  the  thoughts  they  begot  on  the  one  hand  and 
human  intercourse  on  the  other.  Now  I  really  began 
my  higher  education,  and  aired  and  examined  and  de- 


78        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

veloped  in  conversation  the  doubts,  the  ideas,  the  in- 
terpretations that  had  been  forming  in  my  mind.  As 
we  were  both  day-boys  with  a  good  deal  of  control  over 
our  time  we  organised  walks  and  expeditions  together, 
and  my  habit  of  solitary  and  rather  vague  prowling 
gave  way  to  much  more  definite  joint  enterprises.  I 
went  several  times  to  his  house,  he  was  the  youngest 
of  several  brothers,  one  of  whom  was  a  medical  student 
and  let  us  assist  at  the  dissection  of  a  cat,  and  once  or 
twice  in  vacation  time  he  came  to  Penge,  and  we  went 
with  parcels  of  provisions  to  do  a  thorough  day  in  the 
grounds  and  galleries  of  the  Crystal  Palace,  ending 
with  the  fireworks  at  close  quarters.  We  went  in  a 
river  steamboat  down  to  Greenwich,  and  fired  by  that 
made  an  excursion  to  Margate  and  back;  we  explored 
London  docks  and  Bethnal  Green  Museum,  Petticoat 
Lane  and  all  sorts  of  out-of-the-way  places  together. 

We  confessed  shyly  to  one  another  a  common  secret 
vice,  "  Phantom,  warfare/'  When  we  walked  alone, 
especially  in  the  country,  we  had  both  developed  the 
same  practice  of  fighting  an  imaginary  battle  about  us 
as  we  walked.  As  we  went  along  we  were  generals, 
and  our  attacks  pushed  along  on  either  side,  crouching 
and  gathering  behind  hedges,  cresting  ridges,  occu- 
pying copses,  rushing  open  spaces,  fighting  from  house 
to  house.  The  hillsides  about  Penge  were  honeycombed 
in  my  imagination  with  the  pits  and  trenches  I  had 
created  to  check  a  victorious  invader  coming  out  of 
Surrey.  For  him  West  Kensington  was  chiefly  im- 
portant as  the  scene  of  a  desperate  and  successful  last 
stand  of  insurrectionary  troops  (who  had  seized  the 
Navy,  the  Bank  and  other  advantages)  against  a  roy- 
alist army — reinforced  by  Germans — advancing  for 
reasons  best  known  to  themselves  by  way  of  Harrow 
and  Ealing.  It  is  a  secret  and  solitary  game,  as  we 
found  when  we  tried  to  play  it  together.  We  made  a 


SCHOLASTIC  79 

success  of  that  only  once.  All  the  way  down  to  Mar- 
gate we  schemed  defences  and  assailed  and  fought  them 
as  we  came  back  against  the  sunset.  Afterwards  we 
recapitulated  all  that  conflict  by  means  of  a  large  scale 
map  of  the  Thames  and  little  paper  ironclads  in  plan 
cut  out  of  paper. 

A  subsequent  revival  of  these  imaginings  was 
brought  about  by  Britten's  luck  in  getting,  through  a 
friend  of  his  father's,  admission  for  us  both  to  the 
spectacle  of  volunteer  officers  fighting  the  war  game  in 
Caxton  Hall.  We  developed  a  war  game  of  our  own 
at  Britten's  home  with  nearly  a  couple  of  hundred  lead 
soldiers,  some  excellent  spring  cannons  that  shot  hard 
and  true  at  six  yards,  hills  of  books  and  a  constantly 
elaborated  set  of  rules.  For  some  months  that  occupied 
an  immense  proportion  of  our  leisure.  Some  of  our 
battles  lasted  several  days.  We  kept  the  game  a  pro- 
found secret  from  the  other  fellows.  They  would  not 
have  understood. 

And  we  also  began,  it  was  certainly  before  we  were 
sixteen,  to  write,  for  the  sake  of  writing.  We  liked 
writing.  We  had  discovered  Lamb  and  the  best  of  the 
middle  articles  in  such  weeklies  as  the  Saturday  Gazette, 
and  we  imitated  them.  Our  minds  were  full  of  dim 
uncertain  things  we  wanted  to  drag  out  into  the  light 
of  expression.  Britten  had  got  hold  of  In  Memoriam, 
and  I  had  disinterred  Pope's  Essay  on  Man  and  Rabbi 
Ben  Ezra,  and  these  things  had  set  our  theological  and 
cosmic  solicitudes  talking.  I  was  somewhere  between 
sixteen  and  eighteen,  I  know,  when  he  and  I  walked 
along  the  Thames  Embankment  confessing  shamefully 
to  one  another  that  we  had  never  read  Lucretius.  We 
thought  every  one  who  mattered  had  read  Lucretius. 

When  I  was  nearly  sixteen  my  mother  was  taken 
ill  very  suddenly,  and  died  of  some  perplexing  com- 
plaint that  involved  a  post-mortem  examination;  it  was, 


80        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

I  think,  the  trouble  that  has  since  those  days  been 
recognised  as  appendicitis.  This  led  to  a  considerable 
{change  in  my  circumstances;  the  house  at  Penge  was 
given  up,  and  my  Staffordshire  uncle  arranged  for  me 
to  lodge  during  school  terms  with  a  needy  solicitor  and 
his  wife  in  Vicars  Street,  S.  W.,  about  a  mile  and  a 
half  from  the  school.  So  it  was  I  came  right  into 
[London;  I  had  almost  two  years  of  London  before  I 
went  to  Cambridge. 

Those  were  our  great  days  together.  Afterwards 
we  were  torn  apart;  Britten  went  to  Oxford,  and  our 
circumstances  never  afterwards  threw  us  continuously 
together  until  the  days  of  the  Blue  Weekly. 

As  boys,  we  walked  together,  read  and  discussed  the 
same  books,  pursued  the  same  enquiries.  We  got  a 
reputation  as  inseparables  and  the  nickname  of  the 
Rose  and  the  Lily,  for  Britten  was  short  and  thick-set 
with  dark  close  curling  hair  and  a  ruddy  Irish  type  of 
face;  I  was  lean  and  fair-haired  and  some  inches  taller 
than  he.  Our  talk  ranged  widely  and  yet  had  certain 
very  definite  limitations.  We  were  amazingly  free  with 
politics  and  religion,  we  went  to  that  little  meeting- 
house of  William  Morris's  at  Hammersmith  and  worked 
out  the  principles  of  Socialism  pretty  thoroughly,  and 
we  got  up  the  Darwinian  theory  with  the  help  of  Brit- 
ten's medical-student  brother  and  the  galleries  of  the 
Natural  History  Museum  in  Cromwell  Road.  Those 
wonderful  cases  on  the  ground  floor  illustrating 
mimicry,  dimorphism  and  so  forth,  were  new  in  our 
times,  and  we  went  through  them  with  earnest  industry 
and  tried  over  our  Darwinism  in  the  light  of  that.  Such 
topics  we  did  exhaustively.  But  on  the  other  hand  I 
do  not  remember  any  discussion  whatever  of  human 
sex  or  sexual  relationships.  There,  in  spite  of  intense 
secret  curiosities,  our  lips  were  sealed  by  a  peculiar 
shyness.  And  I  do  not  believe  we  ever  had  occasion 


SCHOLASTIC  81 

either  of  us  to  use  the  word  "  love."  It  was  not  only 
that  we  were  instinctively  shy  of  the  subject,  but  that  we 
were  mightily  ashamed  of  the  extent  of  our  ignorance 
ahd  uncertainty  in  these  matters.  We  evaded  them 
elaborately  with  an  assumption  of  exhaustive  knowl- 
edge. 

We  certainly  had  no  shyness  about  theology.  We 
marked  the  emancipation  of  our  spirits  from  the  fright- 
ful teachings  that  had  oppressed  our  boyhood,  by  much 
indulgence  in  blasphemous  wit.  We  had  a  secret  liter- 
ature of  irreverent  rhymes,  and  a  secret  art  of  theo- 
logical caricature.  Britten's  father  had  delighted  his 
family  by  reading  aloud  from  Dr.  Richard  Garnett's 
Twilight  of  the  Gods,  and  Britten  conveyed  the  precious 
volume  to  me.  That  and  the  Bab  Ballads  were  the 
inspiration  of  some  of  our  earliest  lucubrations. 

For  an  imaginative  boy  the  first  experience  of  writ- 
ing is  like  a  tiger's  first  taste  of  blood,  and  our  literary 
flowerings  led  very  directly  to  the  revival  of  the  school 
magazine,  which  had  been  comatose  for  some  years. 
But  there  we  came  upon  a  disappointment. 

§  8 

In  that  revival  we  associated  certain  other  of  the 
Sixth  Form  boys,  and  notably  one  for  whom  our  enter- 
prise was  to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  career  that  has 
ended  in  the  House  of  Lords,  Arthur  Cossington,  now 
Lord  Paddockhurst.  Cossington  was  at  that  time  a 
rather  heavy,  rather  good-looking  boy  who  was  chiefly 
eminent  in  cricket,  an  outsider  even  as  we  were  and 
preoccupied  no  doubt,  had  we  been  sufficiently  detached 
to  observe  him,  with  private  imaginings  very  much  of 
the  same  quality  and  spirit  as  our  own.  He  was,  we 
were  inclined  to  think,  rather  a  sentimentalist,  rather 
a  poseur,  he  affected  a  concise  emphatic  style,  played 


82        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

chess  very  well,  betrayed  a  belief  in  will-power,  and 
earned  Britten's  secret  hostility,  Britten  being  a  sloven/ 
by  the  invariable  neatness  of  his  collars  and  ties.  He 
came  into  our  magazine  with  a  vigour  that  we  found 
extremely  surprising  and  unwelcome. 

Britten  and  I  had  wanted  to  write.  We  had  indeed 
figured  our  project  modestly  as  a  manuscript  magazine 
of  satirical,  liberal  and  brilliant  literature  by  which  in 
some  rather  inexplicable  way  the  vague  tumult  of  ideas 
that  teemed  within  us  was  to  find  form  and  expression; 
Cossington,  it  was  manifest  from  the  outset,  wanted 
neither  to  write  nor  writing,  but  a  magazine.  I  re- 
member the  inaugural  meeting  in  Shoesmith  major's 
study — we  had  had  great  trouble  in  getting  it  together 
— and  how  effectually  Cossington  bolted  with  the  pro- 
posal. 

"  I  think  we  fellows  ought  to  run  a  magazine,"  said 
Cossington*  "  The  school  used  to  have  one.  A  school 
like  this  ought  to  have  a  magazine." 

"  The  last  one  died  in  '84,"  said  Shoesmith  from 
the  hearthrug.  "  Called  the  Observer.  Rot  rather." 

"Bad  title/'  said  Cossington. 

"  There  was  a  Taller  before  that,"  said  Britten,  sit- 
ting on  the  writing  table  at  the  window  that  was  closed 
to  deaden  the  cries  of  the  Lower  School  at  play,  and 
clashing  his  boots  together. 

".We  want  something  suggestive  of  City  Merchants." 

"  City  Merchandize/'  said  Britten. 

"  Too  fanciful.  What  of  Arvonian?  Richard  Ar- 
von  was  our  founder,  and  it  seems  almost  a  duty " 

"  They  call  them  all  -usians  or  -onians/'  said  Brit- 
ten. 

"  I  like  City  Merchandise/'  I  said.  "  We  could  prob- 
ably find  a  quotation  to  suggest — oh!  mixed  good 
things." 

Cossington  regarded  me  abstractedly. 


SCHOLASTIC  83 

"  Don't  want  to  put  the  accent  on  the  City,  do  we  ?  " 
said  Shoesmith,  who  had  a  feeling  for  county  families, 
and  Naylor  supported  him  by  a  murmur  of  approval. 

"We  ought  to  call  it  the  Arvonian,"  decided  Cos- 
sington,  "  and  we  might  very  well  have  underneath, 
'With  which  is  incorporated  the  Observer.'  That  picks 
up  the  old  traditions,  makes  an  appeal  to  old  boys  and 
all  that,  and  it  gives  us  something  to  print  under  the 
title." 

I  still  held  out  for  City  Merchandize,  which  had 
taken  my  fancy.  "  Some  of  the  chaps'  people  won't  like 
it,"  said  Naylor,  "certain  not  to.  And  it  sounds 
Bum." 

"  Sounds  Weird,"  said  a  boy  who  had  not  hitherto 
spoken. 

"  We  aren't  going  to  do  anything  Queer,"  said  Shoe- 
smith,  pointedly  not  looking  at  Britten. 

The  question  of  the  title  had  manifestly  gone  against 
us.  "Oh!  have  it  Arvonian"  I  said. 

"And  next,  what  size  shall  we  have?"  said  Cossing- 
ton. 

"  Something  like  Macmillan's  Magazine — or  Long- 
mans'; Longmans'  is  better  because  it  has  a  whole  page, 
not  columns.  It  makes  no  end  of  difference  to  one's 
effects." 

"  What  effects  ?  "  asked  Shoesmith  abruptly. 

"  Oh !  a  pause  or  a  white  line  or  anything.  You've 
got  to  write  closer  for  a  double  column.  It's  nuggetty. 
You  can't  get  a  swing  on  your  prose."  I  had  discussed 
this  thoroughly  with  Britten. 

"  If  the  fellows  are  going  to  write "  began  Brit- 
ten. 

"  We  ought  to  keep  off  fine  writing,"  said  Shoesmith. 
"  It's  cheek.  I  vote  we  don't  have  any." 

"  We  sha'n't  get  any,"  said  Cossington,  and  then  as 
an  olive  branch  to  me,  "  unless  Remington  does  a  bit. 


84        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

Or  Britten.  But  it's  no  good  making  too  much  space 
for  it." 

"  We  ought  to  be  very  careful  about  the  writing," 
said  Shoesmith.  "  We  don't  want  to  give  ourselves 
away." 

"  I  vote  we  ask  old  Topham  to  see  us  through/'  said 
Naylor. 

Britten  groaned  aloud  and  every  one  regarded  him. 
"  Greek  epigrams  on  the  fellows'  names/'  he  said. 
"  Small  beer  in  ancient  bottles.  Let's  get  a  stuffed 
broody  hen  to  sit  on  the  magazine." 

"We  might  do  worse  than  a  Greek  epigram/'  said 
Cossington.  "  One  in  each  number.  It — it  impresses 
parents  and  keeps  up  our  classical  tradition.  And  the 
masters  can  help.  We  don't  want  to  antagonise  them. 
Of  course — we've  got  to  departmentalise.  Writing  is 
only  one  section  of  the  thing.  The  Arvonian  has  to 
stand  for  the  school.  There's  questions  of  space  and 
questions  of  expense.  We  can't  turn  out  a  great  chunk 
of  printed  prose  like — like  wet  cold  toast  and  call  it  a 
magazine." 

Britten  writhed,  appreciating  the  image. 

"  There's  to  be  a  section  of  sports.  You  must  do 
that." 

"  I'm  not  going  to  do  any  fine  writing/'  said  Shoe- 
smith. 

"What  you've  got  to  do  is  just  to  list  all  the  chaps 
and  put  a  note  to  their  play : — '  Naylor  minor  must 
pass  more.  Football  isn't  the  place  for  extreme  in- 
dividualism.' '  Ammersham  shapes  well  as  half-back.' 
Things  like  that." 

"  I  could  do  that  all  right/'  said  Shoesmith,  bright- 
ening and  manifestly  becoming  pregnant  with  judg- 
ments. 

"  One  great  thing  about  a  magazine  of  this  sort/' 
said  Cossington, *^ is ^to  mention  just  as  many  names  as 


SCHOLASTIC  85 

you  can  in  each  number.  It  keeps  the  interest  alive. 
Chaps  will  turn  it  over  looking  for  their  own  little  bit. 
Then  it  all  lights  up  for  them." 

"  Do  you  want  any  reports  of  matches  ?  "  Shoesmith 
broke  from  his  meditation. 

"  Rather.     With  comments." 

"  Naylor  surpassed  himself  and  negotiated  the  lemon 
safely  home/'  said  Shoesmith. 

"  Shut  it/'  said  Naylor  modestly. 

"  Exactly/'  said  Cossington.  "  That  gives  us  three 
features/'  touching  them  off  on  his  fingers,  "  Epigram, 
Literary  Section,  Sports.  Then  we  want  a  section  to 
shove  anything  into,  a  joke,  a  notice  of  anything  that's 
going  on.  So  on.  Our  Note  Book." 

"  Oh,  Hell !  "  said  Britten,  and  clashed  his  boots,  to 
the  silent  disapproval  of  every  one. 

"  Then  we  want  an  editorial." 

"  A  what?  "  cried  Britten,  with  a  note  of  real  terror 
in  his  voice. 

"  Well,  don't  we  ?  Unless  we  have  our  Note  Book 
to  begin  on  the  front  page.  It  gives  a  scrappy  effect 
to  do  that.  We  want  something  manly  and  straight- 
forward and  a  bit  thoughtful,  about  Patriotism,  say,  or 
Esprit  de  Corps,  or  After-Life." 

I  looked  at  Britten.  Hitherto  we  had  not  consid- 
ered Cossington  mattered  very  much  in  the  world. 

He  went  over  us  as  a  motor-car  goes  over  a  dog. 
There  was  a  sort  of  energy  about  him,  a  new  sort  of 
energy  to  us;  we  had  never  realised  that  anything  of! 
the  sort  existed  in  the  world.  We  were  hopelessly  at  a 
disadvantage.  Almost  instantly  we  had  developed  a 
clear  and  detailed  vision  of  a  magazine  made  up  of 
everything  that  was  most  acceptable  in  the  magazines 
that  flourished  in  the  adult  world  about  us,  and  had 
determined  to  make  it  a  success.  He  had  by  a  kind  of 
instinct,  as  it  were,  synthetically  plagiarised  every 


86        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

successful  magazine  and  breathed  into  this  dusty  mix- 
ture the  breath  of  life.  He  was  elected  at  his  own 
suggestion  managing  director,  with  the  earnest  support 
of  Shoesmith  and  Naylor,  and  conducted  the  magazine 
so  successfully  and  brilliantly  that  he  even  got  a  whole 
back  page  of  advertisements  from  the  big  sports  shop 
in  Holbornj  and  made  the  printers  pay  at  the  same 
rate  for  a  notice  of  certain  books  of  their  own  which 
they  said  they  had  inserted  by  inadvertency  to  fill  up 
space.  The  only  literary  contribution  in  the  first  num- 
ber was  a  column  by  Topham  in  faultless  stereotyped 
English  in  depreciation  of  some  fancied  evil  called 
Utilitarian  Studies  and  ending  with  that  noble  old 
quotation : — 

"To  the  glory  that  was  Greece  and  the  grandeur  that  was 
Rome." 

And  Flack  crowded  us  out  of  number  two  with  a 
bright  little  paper  on  the  "  Humours  of  Cricket/'  and 
the  Head  himself  was  profusely  thoughtful  all  over  the 
editorial  under  the  heading  of  "  The  School  Chapel ; 
and  How  it  Seems  to  an  Old  Boy." 

Britten  and  I  found  it  difficult  to  express  to  each 
other  with  any  grace  or  precision  what  we  felt  about 
that  magazine. 


CHAPTER    THE     FOURTH 

ADOLESCENCE 


I  FIND  it  very  difficult  to  trace  how  form  was  added  to 
form  and  interpretation  followed  interpretation  in  my 
ever-spreading,  ever-deepening,  ever-multiplying  and 
enriching  vision  of  this  world  into  which  I  had  been 
born.  Every  day  added  its  impressions,  its  hints,  its 
subtle  explications  to  the  growing  understanding.  Day 
after  day  the  living  interlacing  threads  of  a  mind 
weave  together.  Every  morning  now  for  three  weeks 
and  more  (for  to-day  is  Thursday  and  I  started  on  a 
Tuesday)  I  have  been  trying  to  convey  some  idea  of 
the  factors  and  early  influences  by  which  my  particular 
scrap  of  subjective  tapestry  was  shaped,  to  show  the 
child  playing  on  the  nursery  floor,  the  son  perplexed  by 
his  mother,  gazing  aghast  at  his  dead  father,  exploring 
interminable  suburbs,  touched  by  first  intimations  of 
the  sexual  mystery,  coming  in  with  a  sort  of  confused 
avidity  towards  the  centres  of  the  life  of  London.  It 
is  only  by  such  an  effort  to  write  it  down  that  one 
realises  how  marvellously  crowded,  how  marvellously 
analytical  and  synthetic  those  ears  must  be.  One  be- 
gins with  the  little  child  to  whom  the  sky  is  a  roof  of 
blue,  the  world  a  screen  of  opaque  and  disconnected 
facts,  the  home  a  thing  eternal,  and  "being  good  "  just 
simple  obedience  to  unquestioned  authority;  and  one 
comes  at  last  to  the  vast  world  of  one's  adult  perception, 
pierced  deep  by  flaring  searchlights  of  partial  under- 

87 


88        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

standing,  here  masked  by  mists,  here  refracted  and  dis- 
torted through  half  translucent  veils,  here  showing 
broad  prospects  and  limitless  vistas  and  here  impene- 
trably dark. 

I  recall  phases  of  deep  speculation,  doubts  and  even 
prayers  by  night,  and  strange  occasions  when  by  a 
sort  of  hypnotic  contemplation  of  nothingness  I  sought 
to  pierce  the  web  of  appearances  about  me.  It  is  hard 
to  measure  these  things  in  receding  perspective,  and 
now  I  cannot  trace,  so  closely  has  mood  succeeded  and 
overlaid  and  obliterated  mood,  the  phases  by  which  an 
utter  horror  of  death  was  replaced  by  the  growing 
realisation  of  its  necessity  and  dignity.  Difficulty  of 
the  imagination  with  infinite  space,  infinite  time,  en- 
tangled my  mind;  and  moral  distress  for  the  pain  and 
suffering  of  bygone  ages  that  made  all  thought  of 
reformation  in  the  future  seem  but  the  grimmest  irony 
upon  now  irreparable  wrongs.  Many  an  intricate  per- 
plexity of  these  broadening  years  did  not  so  much  get 
settled  as  cease  to  matter.  Life  crowded  me  away 
from  it. 

I  have  confessed  myself  a  temerarious  theologian, 
and  in  that  passage  from  boyhood  to  manhood  I  ranged 
widely  in  my  search  for  some  permanently  satisfying 
Truth.  That,  too,  ceased  after  a  time  to  be  urgently 
interesting.  I  came  at  last  into  a  phase  that  endures 
to  this  day,  of  absolute  tranquillity,  of  absolute  con- 
fidence in  whatever  that  Incomprehensible  Compre- 
hensive which  must  needs  be  the  substratum  of  all 
things,  may  be.  Feeling  of  it,  feeling  by  it,  I  cannot 
feel  afraid  of  it.  I  think  I  had  got  quite  clearly  and 
finally  to  that  adjustment  long  before  my  Cambridge 
days  were  done.  I  am  sure  that  the  evil  in  life  is 
transitory  and  finite  like  an  accident  or  distress  in  the 
nursery;  that  God  is  my  Father  and  that  I  may  trust 
Him,  even  though  life  hurts  so  that  one  must  needs 


ADOLESCENCE  81 

cry  out  at  it,  even  though  it  shows  no  consequence  but 
failure,  no  promise  but  pain.  ... 

But  while  I  was  fearless  of  theology  I  must  confess 
it  was  comparatively  late  before  I  faced  and  dared  to 
probe  the  secrecies  of  sex.  I  was  afraid  of  sex.  I  had 
an  instinctive  perception  that  it  would  be  a  large  and 
difficult  thing  in  my  life,  but  my  early  training  was  all 
in  the  direction  of  regarding  it  as  an  irrelevant  thing, 
as  something  disconnected  from  all  the  broad  signifi- 
cances of  life,  as  hostile  and  disgraceful  in  its  quality. 
The  world  was  never  so  emasculated  in  thought,  I  sup- 
pose, as  it  was  in  the  Victorian  time.  .  .  . 

I  was  afraid  to  think  either  of  sex  or  (what  I  have 
always  found  inseparable  from  a  kind  of  sexual  emo- 
tion) beauty.  Even  as  a  boy  I  knew  the  thing  as  a 
haunting  and  alluring  mystery  that  I  tried  to  keep 
away  from.  Its  dim  presence  obsessed  me  none  the 
less  for  all  the  extravagant  decency,  the  stimulating 
silences  of  my  upbringing.  .  .  . 

The  plaster  Venuses  and  Apollos  that  used  to  adorn 
the  vast  aisle  and  huge  grey  terraces  of  the  Crystal 
Palace  were  the  first  intimations  of  the  beauty  of  the 
body  that  ever  came  into  my  life.  As  I  write  of  it  I 
feel  again  the  shameful  attraction  of  those  gracious 
forms.  I  used  to  look  at  them  not  simply,  but  curi- 
ously and  askance.  Once  at  least  in  my  later  days  at 
Penge,  I  spent  a  shilling  in  admission  chiefly  for  the 
sake  of  them.  .  .  . 

The  strangest  thing  of  all  my  odd  and  solitary  up- 
bringing seems  to  me  now  that  swathing  up  of  all  the 
splendours  of  the  flesh,  that  strange  combination  of 
fanatical  terrorism  and  shyness  that  fenced  me  about 
with  prohibitions.  It  caused  me  to  grow  up,  I  will  not 
say  blankly  ignorant,  but  with  an  ignorance  blurred 
and  dishonoured  by  shame,  by  enigmatical  warnings,  by 
cultivated  aversions,  an  ignorance  in  which  a  fascinated 


90        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

curiosity  and  desire  struggled  like  a  thing  in  a  net. 
I  knew  so  little  and  I  felt  so  much.  There  was  indeed 
no  Aphrodite  at  all  in  my  youthful  Pantheon,  but  in- 
stead there  was  a  mysterious  and  minatory  gap.  I 
have  told  how  at  last  a  new  Venus  was  born  in  my 
imagination  out  of  gas  lamps  and  the  twilight,  a  Venus 
with  a  cockney  accent  and  dark  eyes  shining  out  of 
the  dusk,  a  Venus  who  was  a  warm,  passion-stirring 
atmosphere  rather  than  incarnate  in  a  body.  And  I 
have  told,  too,  how  I  bought  a  picture. 

All  this  was  a  thing  apart  from  the  rest  of  my  life, 
a  locked  avoided  chamber.  .  .  . 

It  was  not  until  my  last  year  at  Trinity  that  I  really 
broke  down  the  barriers  of  this  unwholesome  silence 
and  brought  my  secret  broodings  to  the  light  of  day. 
Then  a  little  set  of  us  plunged  suddenly  into  what  we 
called  at  first  sociological  discussion.  I  can  still  recall 
even  the  physical  feeling  of  those  first  tentative  talks. 
I  remember  them  mostly  as  occurring  in  the  rooms  of 
Ted  Hatherleigh,  who  kept  at  the  corner  by  the  Trin- 
ity great  gate,  but  we  also  used  to  talk  a  good  deal 
at  a  man's  in  King's,  a  man  named,  if  I  remember 
rightly,  Redmayne.  The  atmosphere  of  Hatherleigh's 
rooms  was  a  haze  of  tobacco  smoke  against  a  back- 
ground brown  and  deep.  He  professed  himself  a  soci- 
alist with  anarchistic  leanings — he  had  suffered  the 
martyrdom  of  ducking  for  it — and  a  huge  French  May- 
day poster  displaying  a  splendid  proletarian  in  red  and 
black  on  a  barricade  against  a  flaring  orange  sky, 
dominated  his  decorations.  Hatherleigh  affected  a  fine 
untidiness,  and  all  the  place,  even  the  floor,  was  lit- 
tered with  books,  for  the  most  part  open  and  face  down- 
ward; deeper  darknesses  were  supplied  by  a  discarded 
gown  and  our  caps,  all  conscientiously  battered,  Hath- 
erleigh's flopped  like  an  elephant's  ear  and  inserted 
quill  pens  supported  the  corners  of  mine;  the  high 


ADOLESCENCE  91 

lights  of  the  picture  came  chiefly  as  reflections  front 
his  chequered  blue  mugs  full  of  audit  ale.  We  sat 
on  oak  chairs,  except  the  four  or  five  who  crowded  on 
a  capacious  settle,  we  drank  a  lot  of  beer  and  were 
often  fuddled,  and  occasionally  quite  drunk,  and  we  all 
smoked  reckless-looking  pipes, — there  was  a  transient 
fashion  among  us  for  corn  cobs  for  which  Mark  Twain, 
I  think,  was  responsible.  Our  little  excesses  with 
liquor  were  due  far  more  to  conscience  than  appetite, 
indicated  chiefly  a  resolve  to  break  away  from  restraints 
that  we  suspected  were  keeping  us  off  the  instructive 
knife-edges  of  life.  Hatherleigh  was  a  good  English- 
man of  the  premature  type  with  a  red  face,  a  lot  of 
hair,  a  deep  voice  and  an  explosive  plunging  manner, 
and  it  was  he  who  said  one  evening — Heaven  knows 
how  we  got  to  it — "  Look  here,  you  know,  it's  all  Rot, 
this  Shutting  Up  about  Women.  We  ought  to  talk 
about  them.  What  are  we  going  to  do  about  them? 
It's  got  to  come.  We're  all  festering  inside  about  it. 
Let's  out  with  it.  There's  too  much  Decency  altogether 
about  this  Infernal  University!" 

We  rose  to  his  challenge  a  little  awkwardly  and  our 
first  talk  was  clumsy,  there  were  flushed  faces  and  red 
ears,  and  I  remember  Hatherleigh  broke  out  into  a 
monologue  on  decency.  "  Modesty  and  Decency,"  said 
Hatherleigh,  "  are  Oriental  vices.  The  Jews  brought 
them  to  Europe.  They're  Semitic,  just  like  our  monas- 
ticism  here  and  the  seclusion  of  women  and  mutilating 
the  dead  on  a  battlefield.  And  all  that  sort  of  thing." 

Hatherleigh's  mind  progressed  by  huge  leaps,  leaps 
that  were  usually  wildly  inaccurate,  and  for  a  time  we 
engaged  hotly  upon  the  topic  of  those  alleged  mutila- 
tions and  the  Semitic  responsibility  for  decency.  Hather- 
leigh tried  hard  to  saddle  the  Semitic  race  with  the 
less  elegant  war  customs  of  the  Soudan  and  the  north- 
west frontier  of  India,  and  quoted  Doughty,  at  that 


92        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

time  a  little-known  author,  and  Cunninghame  Graham 
to  show  that  the  Arab  was  worse  than  a  county-town 
spinster  in  his  regard  for  respectability.  But  his  case 
was  too  preposterous,  and  Esmeer,  with  his  shrill  pene- 
trating voice  and  his  way  of  pointing  with  all  four  long 
fingers  flat  together,  carried  the  point  against  him.  He 
quoted  Cato  and  Roman  law  and  the  monasteries  of 
Thibet. 

"Well,  anyway,"  said  Hatherleigh,  escaping  from 
our  hands  like  an  intellectual  frog,  "  Semitic  or  not, 
I've  got  no  use  for  decency." 

We  argued  points  and  Hatherleigh  professed  an  un- 
usually balanced  and  tolerating  attitude.  "  I  don't 
mind  a  certain  refinement  and  dignity,"  he  admitted 
generously.  "What  I  object  to  is  this  spreading  out 
of  decency  until  it  darkens  the  whole  sky,  until  it 
makes  a  man's  father  afraid  to  speak  of  the  most  im- 
portant things,  until  it  makes  a  man  afraid  to  look 
a  frank  book  in  the  face  or  think — even  think !  until 
it  leads  to  our  coming  to — to  the  business  at  last  with 
nothing  but  a  few  prohibitions,  a  few  hints,  a  lot  of 
dirty  jokes  and,  and" — he  waved  a  hand  and  seemed 
to  seek  and  catch  his  image  in  the  air — "  oh,  a  con- 
founded buttered  slide  of  sentiment,  to  guide  us.  I 
tell  you  I'm  going  to  think  about  it  and  talk  about  it 
until  I  see  a  little  more  daylight  than  I  do  at  present. 
I'm  twenty-two.  Things  might  happen  to  me  any- 
when.  You  men  can  go  out  into  the  world  if  you  like, 
to  sin  like  fools  and  marry  like  fools,  not  knowing 
what  you  are  doing  and  ashamed  to  ask.  You'll  take 
the  consequences,  too,  I  expect,  pretty  meekly,  snigger- 
ing a  bit,  sentimentalising  a  bit,  like — like  Cambridge 
humorists.  .  .  .  I  mean  to  know  what  I'm  doing." 

He  paused  to  drink,  and  I  think  I  cut  in  with  ideas 
of  my  own.  But  one  is  apt  to  forget  one's  own  share 
in  a  talk,  I  find,  more  than  one  does  the  clear-cut 


ADOLESCENCE  93 

objectivity  of  other  people's,  and  I  do  not  know  how 
far  I  contributed  to  this  discussion  that  followed.  I 
am,  however,  pretty  certain  that  it  was  then  that  ideal 
that  we  were  pleased  to  call  aristocracy  and  which  soon 
became  the  common  property  of  our  set  was  developed. 
It  was  Esmeer,  I  know,  who  laid  down  and  maintained 
the  proposition  that  so  far  as  minds  went  there  were 
really  only  two  sorts  of  man  in  the  world,  the 
aristocrat  and  the  man  who  subdues  his  mind  to  other 
people's. 

!  '  I  couldn't  think  of  it,  Sir,'  "  said  Esmeer  in  his 
elucidatory  tones;  "that's  what  a  servant  says.  His 
mind  even  is  broken  in  to  run  between  fences,  and  he 
admits  it.  We've  got  to  be  able  to  think  of  anything. 
And  '  such  things  aren't  for  the  Likes  of  Us ! '  That's 
another  servant's  saying.  Well,  everything  is  for  the 
Likes  of  Us.  If  we  see  fit,  that  is." 

A  small  fresh-coloured  man  in  grey  objected. 

"  Well,"  exploded  Hatherleigh,  "  if  that  isn't  so 
what  the  deuce  are  we  up  here  for?  Instead  of  working 
in  mines?  If  some  things  aren't  to  be  thought  about 
ever!  We've  got  the  privilege  of  all  these  extra  years 
for  getting  things  straight  in  our  heads,  and  then  we 
won't  use  'em.  Good  God !  what  do  you  think  a  univer- 
sity's for? "  ... 

Esmeer 's  idea  came  with  an  effect  of  real  emanci- 
pation to  several  of  us.  We  were  not  going  to  be 
afraid  of  ideas  any  longer,  we  were  going  to  throw 
down  every  barrier  of  prohibition  and  take  them  in 
and  see  what  came  of  it.  We  became  for  a  time  even 
intemperately  experimental,  and  one  of  us,  at  the  bare 
suggestion  of  an  eminent  psychic  investigator,  took 
hashish  and  very  nearly  died  of  it  within  a  fortnight 
of  our  great  elucidation. 

The  chief  matter  of  our  interchanges  was  of  course 
the  discussion  of  sex.  Once  the  theme  had  been 


94        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

opened  it  became  a  sore  place  in  our  intercourse;  none 
of  us  seemed  able  to  keep  away  from  it.  Our  imagi- 
nations got  astir  with  it.  We  made  up  for  lost  time 
and  went  round  it  and  through  it  and  over  it  ex- 
haustively. I  recall  prolonged  discussion  of  polygamy 
on  the  way  to  Royston,  muddy  November  tramps  to 
Madingley,  when  amidst  much  profanity  from  Hather- 
leigh  at  the  serious  treatment  of  so  obsolete  a  matter, 
we  weighed  the  reasons,  if  any,  for  the  institution  of 
marriage.  The  fine  dim  night-time  spaces  of  the  Great 
Court  are  bound  up  with  the  inconclusive  finales  of 
mighty  hot-eared  wrangles;  the  narrows  of  Trinity 
Street  and  Petty  Cury  and  Market  Hill  have  their 
particular  associations  for  me  with  that  spate  of  con- 
fession and  free  speech,  that  almost  painful  gaol 
delivery  of  long  pent  and  cramped  and  sometimes 
crippled  ideas. 

And  we  went  on  a  reading  party  that  Easter  to  a 
place  called  Pulborough  in  Sussex,  where  there  is  a  fish- 
ing inn  and  a  river  that  goes  under  a  bridge.  It  was  a 
late  Easter  and  a  blazing  one,  and  we  boated  and 
bathed  and  talked  of  being  Hellenic  and  the  beauty  of 
the  body  until  at  moments  it  seemed  to  us  that  we 
were  destined  to  restore  the  Golden  Age,  by  the  simple 
abolition  of  tailors  and  outfitters. 

Those  undergraduate  talks!  how  rich  and  glorious 
they  seemed,  how  splendidly  new  the  ideas  that  grew 
and  multiplied  in  our  seething  minds !  We  made  long 
afternoon  and  evening  raids  over  the  Downs  towards 
Arundel,  and  would  come  tramping  back  through  the 
still  keen  moonlight  singing  and  shouting.  We  formed 
romantic  friendships  with  one  another,  and  grieved  more 
or  less  convincingly  that  there  were  no  splendid  women 
fit  to  be  our  companions  in  the  world.  But  Hather- 
leigh,  it  seemed,  had  once  known  a  girl  whose  hair  was 
gloriously  red.  "  My  God !  "  said  Hatherleigh  to  con- 


ADOLESCENCE  95 

vey  the  quality  of  her;  just  simply  and  with  projectile 
violence :  "  My  God !  " 

Benton  had  heard  of  a  woman  who  lived  with  a 
man  refusing  to  be  married  to  him — we  thought  that 
splendid  beyond  measure, — I  cannot  now  imagine  why. 
She  was  "  like  a  tender  goddess,"  Benton  said.  A  sort 
of  shame  came  upon  us  in  the  dark  in  spite  of  our  lib- 
eral intentions  when  Benton  committed  himself  to  that. 
And  after  such  talk  we  would  fall  upon  great  pauses  of 
emotional  dreaming,  and  if  by  chance  we  passed  a  girl 
in  a  governess  cart,  or  some  farmer's  daughter  walking 
to  the  station,  we  became  alertly  silent  or  obstreperously 
indifferent  to  her.  For  might  she  not  be  just  that  one 
exception  to  the  banal  decency,  the  sickly  pointless 
conventionality,  the  sham  modesty  of  the  times  in 
which  we  lived? 

We  felt  we  stood  for  a  new  movement,  not  realising 
how  perennially  this  same  emancipation  returns  to  those 
ancient  courts  beside  the  Cam.  We  were  the  anti- 
decency  party,  we  discovered  a  catch  phrase  that  we 
flourished  about  in  the  Union  and  made  our  watch- 
word, namely,  "  stark  fact."  We  hung  nude  pictures 
in  our  rooms  much  as  if  they  had  been  flags,  to  the 
earnest  concern  of  our  bedders,  and  I  disinterred  my 
long-kept  engraving  and  had  it  framed  in  fumed  oak, 
and  found  for  it  a  completer  antf  less  restrained  com- 
panion, a  companion  I  never  cared  for  in  the  slightest 
degree.  .  .  . 

This  efflorescence  did  not  prevent,  I  think  indeed  it 
rather  helped,  our  more  formal  university  work,  for 
most  of  us  took  firsts,  and  three  of  us  got  Fellowships 
in  one  year  or  another.  There  was  Benton  who  had 
a  Research  Fellowship  and  went  to  Tubingen,  there 
was  Esmeer  and  myself  who  both  became  Residential 
Fellows.  I  had  taken  the  Mental  and  Moral  Science 
Tripos  (as  it  was  then),  and  three  years  later  I  got  a 


96        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

lectureship  in  political  science.      In  those  days  it  was 
disguised  in  the  cloak  of  Political  Economy. 


§  2 

It  was  our  affectation  to  be  a  little  detached  from 
the  main  stream  of  undergraduate  life.  We  worked 
pretty  hard,  but  by  virtue  of  our  beer,  our  socialism 
and  suchlike  heterodoxy,  held  ourselves  to  be  differ- 
entiated from  the  swatting  reading  man.  None  of  us, 
except  Baxter,  who  was  a  rowing  blue,  a  rather  ab- 
normal blue  with  an  appetite  for  ideas,  took  games 
seriously  enough  to  train,  and  on  the  other  hand  we 
intimated  contempt  for  the  rather  mediocre,  deliber- 
ately humorous,  consciously  gentlemanly  and  consciously 
wild  undergraduate  men  who  made  up  the  mass  of 
Cambridge  life.  After  the  manner  of  youth  we  were 
altogether  too  hard  on  our  contemporaries.  We 
battered  our  caps  and  tore  our  gowns  lest  they  should 
seem  new,  and  we  despised  these  others  extremely  for 
doing  exactly  the  same  things;  we  had  an  idea  of  our- 
selves and  resented  beyond  measure  a  similar  weakness 
in  these  our  brothers. 

There  was  a  type,  or  at  least  there  seemed  to  us  to 
be  a  type — I'm  a  little  doubtful  at  times  now  whether 
after  all  we  didn't  create  it — for  which  Hatherleigh 
invented  the  nickname  the  "  Pinky  Dinkys,"  intending 
thereby  both  contempt  and  abhorrence  in  almost  equal 
measure.  The  Pinky  Dinky  summarised  all  that  we 
particularly  did  not  want  to  be,  and  also,  I  now  per- 
ceive, much  of  what  we  were  and  all  that  we  secretly 
dreaded  becoming. 

But  it  is  hard  to  convey  the  Pinky  Dinky  idea,  for 
all  that  it  meant  so  much  to  us.  We  spent  one  even- 
ing at  least  during  that  reading  party  upon  the  Pinky 
Dinky;  we  sat  about  our  one  fire  after  a  walk  in  the 


ADOLESCENCE  97 

rain — it  was  our  only  wet  day — smoked  our  excessively 
virile  pipes,  and  elaborated  the  natural  history  of  the 
Pinky  Dinky.  We  improvised  a  sort  of  Pinky  Dinky 
litany,  and  Hatherleigh  supplied  deep  notes  for  the 
responses. 

"  The  Pinky  Dinky  extracts  a  good  deal  of  amuse- 
ment from  life/'  said  some  one. 

"  Damned  prig !  "  said  Hatherleigh. 

"  The  Pinky  Dinky  arises  in  the  Union  and  treats 
the  question  with  a  light  gay  touch.  He  makes  the 
weird  ones  mad.  But  sometimes  he  cannot  go  on 
because  of  the  amusement  he  extracts." 

"  I  want  to  shy  books  at  the  giggling  swine/'  said 
Hatherleigh. 

"  The  Pinky  Dinky  says  suddenly  while  he  is  making 
the  tea,  '  We're  all  being  frightfully  funny.  It's  time 
for  you  to  say  something  now.'  " 

"The  Pinky  Dinky  shakes  his  head  and  says:  'I'm 
afraid  I  shall  never  be  a  responsible  being.'  And  he 
really  is  frivolous." 

"  Frivolous  but  not  vulgar/'  said  Esmeer. 

"  Pinky  Dinkys  are  chaps  who've  had  their  buds 
nipped,"  said  Hatherleigh.  "  They're  Plebs  and  they 
know  it.  They  haven't  the  Guts  to  get  hold  of  things. 
And  so  they  worry  up  all  those  silly  little  jokes  of 
theirs  to  carry  it  off."  .  .  . 

We  tried  bad  ones  for  a  time,  viciously  flavoured. 

"  Pinky  Dinkys  are  due  to  over-production  of  the 
type  that  ought  to  keep  outfitters'  shops.  Pinky  Dinkys 
would  like  to  keep  outfitters'  shops  with  whimsy 
Ascriptions  on  the  boxes  and  make  your  bill  out  funny, 
and  not  be  snobs  to  customers,  no! — not  even  if  they 
had  titles." 

"  Every  Pinky  Dinky *s  people  are  rather  good 
people,  and  better  than  most  Pinky  Dinky's  people. 
But  he  does  not  put  on  side." 


98        THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

"  Pinky  Dinkys  become  playful  at  the  sight  of 
women." 

; '  Croquet's  my  game/   said  the  Pinky  Dinky,  and 
felt  a  man  condescended." 

"  But  what  the  devil  do  they  think  they're  up  to, 
anyhow?  "  roared  old  Hatherleigh  suddenly,  dropping 
plump  into  bottomless  despair. 

We  felt  we  had  still  failed  to  get  at  the  core  of  the 
mystery  of  the  Pinky  Dinky. 

We  tried  over  things  about  his  religion.  "  The  Pinky 
Dinky  goes  to  King's  Chapel,  and  sits  and  feels  in 
the  dusk.  Solemn  things!  Oh  hush!  He  wouldn't 
tell  you " 

"  He  couldn't  tell  you." 

"  Religion  is  so  sacred  to  him  he  never  talks  about 
it,  never  reads  about  it,  never  thinks  about  it.  Just 
feels!" 

"  But  in  his  heart  of  hearts,  oh !  ever  so  deep,  the 
Pinky  Dinky  has  a  doubt " 

Some  one  protested. 

"  Not  a  vulgar  doubt,"  Esmeer  went  on,  "  but  a 
kind  of  hesitation  whether  the  Ancient  of  Days  is 
really  exactly  what  one  would  call  good  form.  .  .  . 
There's  a  lot  of  horrid  coarseness  got  into  the  world 
somehow.  Somebody  put  it  there.  .  .  .  And  any- 
how there's  no  particular  reason  why  a  man  should  be 
seen  about  with  Him.  He's  jolly  Awful  of  course  and 
all  that— 

"  The  Pinky  Dinky  for  all  his  fun  and  levity  has 
a  clean  mind." 

"  A  thoroughly  clean  mind.  Not  like  Esmeer's — • 
the  Pig!" 

"  If  once  he  began  to  think  about  sex,  how  could 
he  be  comfortable  at  croquet  ?  " 

"  It's  their  Damned  Modesty,"  said  Hatherleigh 
suddenly,  "that's  what's  the  matter  with  the  Pinky 


ADOLESCENCE  99 

Dinky.  It's  Mental  Cowardice  dressed  up  as  a  virtue 
and  taking  the  poor  dears  in.  Cambridge  is  soaked 
with  it;  it's  some  confounded  local  bacillus.  Like  the 
thing  that  gives  a  flavour  to  Havana  cigars.  He 
comes  up  here  to  be  made  into  a  man  and  a  ruler  of 
the  people,  and  he  thinks  it  shows  a  nice  disposition 
not  to  take  on  the  job!  How  the  Devil  is  a  great 
Empire  to  be  run  with  men  like  him  ?  " 

"All  his  little  jokes  and  things/'  said  Esmeer  re- 
garding his  feet  on  tlie  fender,  "it's  just  a  nervous 
sniggering — because  he's  afraid.  .  .  „  Oxford's  no 
better." 

"What's  he  afraid  of?"  said  I. 

"  God  knows ! "  exploded  Hatherleigh  and  stared  at 
the  fire. 

"Life!"  said  Esmeer.  "And  so  in  a  way  are  we/' 
he  added,  and  made  a  thoughtful  silence  for  a  time. 

"  I  say,"  began  Carter,  who  was  doing  the  Natural 
Science  Tripos,  "what  is  the  adult  form  of  the  Pinky 
Dinky?" 

But  there  we  were  checked  by  our  ignorance  of  the 
world. 

"  What  is  the  adult  form  of  any  of  us  ? "  asked 
Benton,  voicing  the  thought  that  had  arrested  our  flow. 

§    3 

I  do  not  remember  that  we  ever  lifted  our  criticism 
to  the  dons  and  the  organisation  of  the  University.  I 
think  we  took  them  for  granted.  When  I  look  back 
at  my  youth  I  am  always  astonished  by  the  multitude 
of  things  that  we  took  for  granted.  It  seemed  to  us 
that  Cambridge  was  in  the  order  of  things,  for  all  the 
world  like  having  eyebrows  or  a  vermiform  appendix. 
Now  with  the  larger  scepticism  of  middle  age  I  can 
entertain  very  fundamental  doubts  about  these  old  uni- 
versities. Indeed  I  had  a  scheme 


100      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

I  do  not  see  what  harm  I  can  do  now  by  laying  bare 
the  purpose  of  the  political  combinations  I  was  trying 
to  effect. 

My  educational  scheme  was  indeed  the  starting- 
point  of  all  the  big  project  of  conscious  public  recon- 
struction at  which  I  aimed.  I  wanted  to  build  up  a 
new  educational  machine  altogether  for  the  governing 
class  out  of  a  consolidated  system  of  special  public 
service  schools.  I  meant  to  get  to  work  upon  this 
whatever  office  I  was  given  in  the  new  government.  I 
could  have  begun  my  plan  from  the  Admiralty  or  the 
War  Office  quite  as  easily  as  from  the  Education 
Office.  I  am  firmly  convinced  it  is  hopeless  to  think 
of  reforming  the  old  public  schools  and  universities 
to  meet  the  needs  of  a  modern  state,  they  send  their 
roots  too  deep  and  far,  the  cost  would  exceed  any 
good  that  could  possibly  be  effected,,  and  so  I  have 
sought  a  way  round  this  invincible  obstacle.  I  do 
think  it  would  be  quite  practicable  to  side-track,  as  the 
Americans  say,  the  whole  system  by  creating  hard- 
working, hard-living,  modern  and  scientific  boys* 
schools,  first  for  the  Royal  Navy  and  then  for  the 
public  service  generally,  and  as  they  grew,  opening  them 
to  the  public  without  any  absolute  obligation  to  subse- 
quent service.  Simultaneously  with  this  it  would  not 
be  impossible  to  develop  a  new  college  system  with 
strong  faculties  in  modern  philosophy,  modern  history, 
European  literature  and  criticism,  physical  and  biologi- 
cal science,  education  rnd  sociology. 

We  could  in  fact  create  a  new  liberal  education  in 
this  way,  and  cut  the  umbilicus  of  the  classical  languages 
for  good  and  all.  I  should  have  set  this  going,  and 
trusted  it  to  correct  or  kill  the  old  public  schools  and 
the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  tradition  altogether.  I  had 
men  in  my  mind  to  begin  the  work,  and  I  should  have 
found  others.  I  should  have  aimed  at  making  a  hard- 


ADOLESCENCE  101 

trained,  capable,  intellectually  active,  proud  type  of 
man.  Everything  else  would  have  been  made  sub- 
servient to  that.  I  should  have  kept  my  grip  on  the 
men  through  their  vacation,  and  somehow  or  other  I 
would  have  contrived  a  young  woman  to  match  them. 
I  think  I  could  have  seen  to  it  effectually  enough  that 
they  didn't  get  at  croquet  and  tennis  with  the  vicarage 
daughters  and  discover  sex  in  the  Peeping  Tom  fashion 
I  did,  and  that  they  realised  quite  early  in  life  that  it 
isn't  really  virile  to  reek  of  tobacco.  I  should  have  had 
military  manoeuvres,  training  ships,  aeroplane  work, 
mountaineering  and  so  forth,  in  the  place  of  the  solemn 
trivialities  of  games,  and  I  should  have  £ed  aiad  housed 
my  men  clean  and  very  hard — where.1  there  wasn't  any 
audit  ale,  no  credit  tradesmen,  and  plenty 'o£  kigh  presK 
sure  douches.  .  .  . 

I  have  revisited  Cambridge  and  Oxford  time  after 
time  since  I  came  down,  and  so  far  as  the  Empire  goes, 
I  want  to  get  clear  of  those  two  places.  .  .  . 

Always  I  renew  my  old  feelings,  a  physical  oppres- 
sion, a  sense  of  lowness  and  dampness  almost  exactly 
like  the  feeling  of  an  underground  room  where  paper 
moulders  and  leaves  the  wall,  a  feeling  of  inerad- 
icable contagion  in  the  Gothic  buildings,  in  the  narrow 
ditch-like  rivers,  in  those  roads  and  roads  of  stuffy 
little  villas.  Those  little  villas  have  destroyed  all  the 
good  of  the  old  monastic  system  and  none  of  its 
evil.  .  .  . 

Some  of  the  most  charming  people  in  the  world 
live  in  them,  but  their  collective  effect  is  below  the 
quality  of  any  individual  among  them.  Cambridge  is 
a  world  of  subdued  tones,  of  excessively  subtle  humours, 
of  prim  conduct  and  free  thinking;  it  fears  the  Parent, 
but  it  has  no  fear  of  God;  it  offers  amidst  surroundings 
that  vary  between  disguises  and  antiquarian  charm  the 
inflammation  of  literature's  purple  draught;  one  hears 


102      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLi 

there  a  peculiar  thin  scandal  like  no  other  scandal  in 
the  world — a  covetous  scandal — so  that  I  am  always 
reminded  of  Ibsen  in  Cambridge.  In  Cambridge  and 
the  plays  of  Ibsen  alone  does  it  seem  appropriate  for 
the  heroine  before  the  great  crisis  of  life  to  "  enter, 
take  off  her  overshoes,  and  put  her  wet  umbrella  upon 
the  writing  desk."  .  . 

We  have  to  make  a  new  Academic  mind  for  modern 
needs,  and  the  last  thing  to  make  it  out  of,  I  am  con- 
vinced, is  the  old  Academic  mind.  One  might  as  soon 
try  to  fake  the  old  Victory  at  Portsmouth  into  a  line 
of  battleship:  again.  Besides  which  the  old  Academic 
mind,,  like  thosie  old  bathless,  damp  Gothic  colleges,  is 
nmoh  too  delightful  in  its  peculiar  and  distinctive  way 
to  damage  by  futile  patching. 

My  heart  warms  to  a  sense  of  affectionate  absurdity 
as  I  recall  dear  old  Codger,  surely  the  most  "  unlead- 
erly  "  of  men.  No  more  than  from  the  old  Schoolmen, 
his  kindred,  could  one  get  from  him  a  School  for  Princes. 
Yet  apart  from  his  teaching  he  was  as  curious  and 
adorable  as  a  good  Netsuke.  Until  quite  recently  he 
was  a  power  in  Cambridge,  he  could  make  and  bar  and 
destroy,  and  in  a  way  he  has  become  the  quintessence 
of  Cambridge  in  my  thoughts. 

I  see  him  on  his  way  to  the  morning's  lecture,  with 
his  plump  childish  face,  his  round  innocent  eyes,  his 
absurdly  non-prehensile  fat  hand  carrying  his  cap,  his 
grey  trousers  braced  up  much  too  high,  his  feet  a  trifle 
inturned,  and  going  across  the  great  court  with  a  queer 
tripping  pace  that  seemed  cultivated  even  to  my  naive 
undergraduate  eye.  Or  I  see  him  lecturing.  He 
lectured  walking  up  and  down  between  the  desks, 
talking  in  a  fluting  rapid  voice,  and  with  the  utmost 
lucidity.  If  he  could  not  walk  up  and  down  he  could 
not  lecture.  His  mind  and  voice  had  precisely  the 
fluid  quality  of  some  clear  subtle  liquid;  one  felt  it 


ADOLESCENCE  103 

could  flow  round  anything  and  overcome  nothing. 
And  its  nimble  eddies  were  wonderful!  Or  again  I 
recall  him  drinking  port  with  little  muscular  move- 
ments in  his  neck  and  cheek  and  chin  and  his  brows 
knit — very  judicial,  very  concentrated,  preparing  to  say 
the  apt  just  thing;  it  was  the  last  thing  he  would  have 
told  a  lie  about. 

When  I  think  of  Codger  I  am  reminded  of  an  in- 
scription I  saw  on  some  occasion  in  Regent's  Park 
above  two  eyes  scarcely  more  limpidly  innocent  than 
his — "  Born  in  the  Menagerie."  Never  once  since 
Codger  began  to  display  the  early  promise  of  scholar- 
ship at  the  age  of  eight  or  more,  had  he  been  outside 
the  bars.  His  utmost  travel  had  been  to  lecture  here 
and  lecture  there.  His  student  phase  had  culminated 
in  papers  of  quite  exceptional  brilliance,  and  he  had 
gone  on  to  lecture  with  a  cheerful  combination  of  wit 
and  mannerism  that  had  made  him  a  success  from  the 
beginning.  He  has  lectured  ever  since.  He  lectures 
still.  Year  by  year  he  has  become  plumper,  more 
rubicund  and  more  and  more  of  an  item  for  the 
intelligent  visitor  to  see.  Even  in  my  time  he  was 
pointed  out  to  people  as  part  of  our  innumerable 
enrichments,  and  obviously  he  knew  it.  He  has  be- 
come now  almost  the  leading  Character  in  a  little 
donnish  world  of  much  too  intensely  appreciated 
Characters. 

He  boasted  he  took  no  exercise,  and  also  of  his  knowl- 
edge of  port  wine.  Of  other  wines  he  confessed  quite 
frankly  he  had  no  "  special  knowledge."  Beyond 
these  things  he  had  little  pride  except  that  he  claimed 
to  have  read  every  novel  by  a  woman  writer  that  had 
ever  entered  the  Union  Library.  This,  however,  he 
held  to  be  remarkable  rather  than  ennobling,  and  such 
boasts  as  he  made  of  it  were  tinged  with  playfulness. 
Certainly  he  had  a  scholar's  knowledge  of  the  works  of 


104.      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

Miss  Marie  Corelli,  Miss  Braddon,  Miss  Elizabeth  Glyn 
and  Madame  Sarah  Grand  that  would  have  astonished 
and  flattered  those  ladies  enormously,  and  he  loved 
nothing  so  much  in  his  hours  of  relaxation  as  to  pro- 
pound and  answer  difficult  questions  upon  their  books. 
Tusher  of  King's  was  his  ineffectual  rival  in  this  field, 
their  bouts  were  memorable  and  rarely  other  than 
glorious  for  Codger;  but  then  Tusher  spread  himself 
too  much,  he  also  undertook  to  rehearse  whole  pages 
out  of  Bradshaw,  and  tell  you  with  all  the  changes  how 
to  get  from  any  station  to  any  station  in  Great  Britain 
by  the  nearest  and  cheapest  routes.  .  .  . 

Codger  lodged  with  a  little  deaf  innocent  old  lady, 
Mrs.  Araminta  Mergle,  who  was  understood  to  be  her- 
self a  very  redoubtable  Character  in  the  Gyp-Bedder 
class;  about  her  he  related  quietly  absurd  anecdotes. 
He  displayed  a  marvellous  invention  in  ascribing  to 
her  plausible  expressions  of  opinion  entirely  identical 
in  import  with  those  of  the  Oxford  and  Harvard 
Pragmatists,  against  whom  he  waged  a  fierce  obscure 
war.  .  .  . 

It  was  Codger's  function  to  teach  me  philosophy, 
philosophy!  the  intimate  wisdom  of  things.  He  dealt 
in  a  variety  of  Hegelian  stuff  like  nothing  else  in  the 
world,  but  marvellously  consistent  with  itself.  It  was 
a  wonderful  web  he  spun  out  of  that  queer  big  active 
childish  brain  that  had  never  lusted  nor  hated  nor 
grieved  nor  feared  nor  passionately  loved, — a  web  of 
iridescent  threads.  He  had  luminous  final  theories 
about  Love  and  Death  and  Immortality,  odd  matters 
they  seemed  for  him  to  think  about!  and  all  his  woven 
thoughts  lay  across  my  perception  of  the  realities  of 
things,  as  flimsy  and  irrelevant  and  clever  and  beauti- 
ful, oh! — as  a  dew-wet  spider's  web  slung  in  the  morn- 
ing sunshine  across  the  black  mouth  of  a  gun.  *  -  • 


ADOLESCENCE  105 

§   4 

All  through  those  years  of  development  I  perceive 
now  there  must  have  been  growing  in  me,  slowly, 
irregularly,  assimilating  to  itself  all  the  phrases  and 
forms  of  patriotism,  diverting  my  religious  impulses, 
utilising  my  aesthetic  tendencies,  my  dominating  idea, 
the  statesman's  idea,  that  idea  of  social  service  which 
is  the  protagonist  of  my  story,  that  real  though  com- 
plex passion  for  Making,  making  widely  and  greatly, 
cities,  national  order,  civilisation,  whose  interplay  with 
all  those  other  factors  in  life  I  have  set  out  to  present. 
It  was  growing  in  me — as  one's  bones  grow,  no  man 
intending  it. 

I  have  tried  to  show  how,  quite  early  in  my  life,  the 
fact  of  disorderliness,  the  conception  of  social  life  as 
being  a  multitudinous  confusion  out  of  hand,  came  to 
me.  One  always  of  course  simplifies  these  things  in  the 
telling,  but  I  do  not  think  I  ever  saw  the  world  at 
large  in  any  other  terms.  I  never  at  any  stage  enter- 
tained the  idea  which  sustained  my  mother,  and  which 
sustains  so  many  people  in  the  world, — the  idea  that 
the  universe,  whatever  superficial  discords  it  may 
present,  is  as  a  matter  of  fact  "  all  right,"  is  being 
steered  to  definite  ends  by  a  serene  and  unquestionable 
God.  My  mother  thought  that  Order  prevailed,  and 
that  disorder  was  just  incidental  and  foredoomed 
rebellion;  I  feel  and  have  always  felt  that  order  rebels 
against  and  struggles  against  disorder,  that  order  has 
an  up-hill  job,  in  gardens,  experiments,  suburbs,  every- 
thing alike;  from  the  very  beginnings  of  my  experience 
I  discovered  hostility  to  order,  a  constant  escaping  from 
control. 

The  current  of  living  and  contemporary  ideas  in 
which  my  mind  was  presently  swimming  made  all  in 
the  same  direction;  in  place  of  my  mother's  attentive, 


106      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

meticulous   but   occasionally   extremely   irascible   Provi- 
dence, the  talk  was  all  of  the  Struggle  for  Existenc 
and  the  survival  not  of  the  Best — that  was  nonsense, 
but  of  the  fittest  to  survive. 

The  attempts  to  rehabilitate  Faith  in  the  form  of 
the  Individualist's  laissez  faire  never  won  upon  me.  I 
disliked  Herbert  Spencer  all  my  life  until  I  read  his 
autobiography,  and  then  I  laughed  a  little  and  loved 
him.  I  remember  as  early  as  the  City  Merchants'  days 
how  Britten  and  I  scoffed  at  that  pompous  question- 
begging  word  "  Evolution,"  having,  so  to  speak,  found 
it  out.  Evolution,  some  illuminating  talker  had  re- 
marked at  the  Britten  lunch  table,  had  led  not  only  to 
man,  but  to  the  liver-fluke  and  skunk,  obviously  it 
might  lead  anywhere;  order  came  into  things  only 
through  the  struggling  mind  of  man.  That  lit  things 
wonderfully  for  us.  When  I  went  up  to  Cambridge 
I  was  perfectly  clear  that  life  was  a  various  and 
splendid  disorder  of  forces  that  the  spirit  of  man  sets 
itself  to  tame.  I  have  never  since  fallen  away  from 
that  persuasion. 

I  do  not  think  I  was  exceptionally  precocious  in 
reaching  these  conclusions  and  a  sort  of  religious 
finality  for  myself  by  eighteen  or  nineteen.  I  know 
men  and  women  vary  very  much  in  these  matters,  just 
as  children  do  in  learning  to  talk.  Some  will  chatter 
at  eighteen  months  and  some  will  hardly  speak  until 
three,  and  the  thing  has  very  little  to  do  with  their 
subsequent  mental  quality.  So  it  is  with  young  people; 
some  will  begin  their  religious,  their  social,  their  sexual 
interests  at  fourteen,  some  not  until  far  on  in  the  twen- 
ties. Britten  and  I  belonged  to  one  of  the  precocious 
types,  and  Cossington  very  probably  to  another.  It 
wasn't  that  there  was  anything  priggish  about  any  of 
us;  we  should  have  been  prigs  to  have  concealed  our 
spontaneous  interests  and  ape  the  theoretical  boy. 


ADOLESCENCE  107 

The  world  of  man  centred  for  my  imagination  in 
London,  it  still  centres  there;  the  real  and  present 
world,  that  is  to  say,  as  distinguished  from  the  wonder- 
lands of  atomic  and  microscopic  science  and  the  stars 
and  future  time.  I  had  travelled  scarcely  at  all,  I  had 
never  crossed  the  Channel,  but  I  had  read  copiously  and 
I  had  formed  a  very  good  working  idea  of  this  round 
globe  with  its  mountains  and  wildernesses  and  forests 
and  all  the  sorts  and  conditions  of  human  life  that  were 
scattered  over  its  surface.  It  was  all  alive,  I  felt,  and 
changing  every  day;  how  it  was  changing,  and  the 
changes  men  might  bring  about,  fascinated  my  mind 
beyond  measure. 

I  used  to  find  a  charm  in  old  maps  that  showed 
The  World  as  Known  to  the  Ancients,  and  I  wish  I 
could  now  without  any  suspicion  of  self-deception  write 
down  compactly  the  world  as  it  was  known  to  me  at 
nineteen.  So  far  as  extension  went  it  was,  I  fancy,  very 
like  the  world  I  know  now  at  forty-two;  I  had 
practically  all  the  mountains  and  seas,  boundaries  and 
races,  products  and  possibilities  that  I  have  now.  But 
its  intension  was  very  different.  All  the  interval  has 
been  increasing  and  deepening  my  social  knowledge, 
replacing  crude  and  second-hand  impressions  by  felt 
and  realised  distinctions. 

In  1895 — that  was  my  last  year  with  Britten,  for  I 
went  up  to  Cambridge  in  September — my  vision  of  the 
world  had  much  the  same  relation  to  the  vision  I  have 
to-day  that  an  ill-drawn  daub  of  a  mask  has  to  the 
direct  vision  of  a  human  face.  Britten  and  I  looked 
at  our  world  and  saw — what  did  we  see?  Forms  and 
colours  side  by  side  that  we  had  no  suspicion  were 
interdependent.  We  had  no  conception  of  the  roots  of 
things  nor  of  the  reaction  of  things.  It  did  not  seem 
to  us,  for  example,  that  business  had  anything  to  do 
with  government,  or  that  money  and  means  affected  the 


108      THE  NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

heroic  issues  of  war.  There  were  no  wagons  in  our 
war  game,  and  where  there  were  guns,  there  it  was 
assumed  the  ammunition  was  gathered  together. 
Finance  again  was  a  sealed  book  to  us;  we  did  not 
so  much  connect  it  with  the  broad  aspects  of  human 
affairs  as  regard  it  as  a  sort  of  intrusive  nuisance  to 
be  earnestly  ignored  by  all  right-minded  men.  We 
had  no  conception  of  the  quality  of  politics,  nor  how 
"  interests "  came  into  such  affairs ;  we  believed  men 
were  swayed  by  purely  intellectual  convictions  and 
were  either  right  or  wrong,  honest  or  dishonest  (in 
which  case  they  deserved  to  be  shot),  good  or  bad.  We 
knew  nothing  of  mental  inertia,  and  could  imagine  the 
opinion  of  a  whole  nation  changed  by  one  lucid  and 
convincing  exposition.  We  were  capable  of  the  most 
incongruous  transfers  from  the  scroll  of  history  to  our 
own  times,  we  could  suppose  Brixton  ravaged  and 
Hampstead  burnt  in  civil  wars  for  the  succession  to  the 
throne,  or  Cheapside  a  lane  of  death  and  the  front  of 
the  Mansion  House  set  about  with  guillotines  in  the 
course  of  an  accurately  transposed  French  Revolution. 
We  rebuilt  London  by  Act  of  Parliament,  and  once  in 
a  mood  of  hygienic  enterprise  we  transferred  its  popu- 
lation en  masse  to  the  North  Downs  by  an  order  of 
the  Local  Government  Board.  We  thought  nothing  of 
throwing  religious  organisations  out  of  employment  or 
superseding  all  the  newspapers  by  freely  distributed 
bulletins.  We  could  contemplate  the  possibility  of 
laws  abolishing  whole  classes;  we  were  equal  to  such  a 
dream  as  the  peaceful  and  orderly  proclamation  of 
Communism  from  the  steps  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral, 
after  the  passing  of  a  simply  worded  bill, — a  close  and 
not  unnaturally  an  exciting  division  carrying  the  third 
reading.  I  remember  quite  distinctly  evolving  that 
vision.  We  were  then  fully  fifteen  and  we  were  per- 
fectly serious  about  it.  We  were  not  fools;  it  was 


ADOLESCENCE  103 

simply  that  as  yet  we  had  gathered  no  experience  at  all 
of  the  limits  and  powers  of  legislation  and  conscious 
collective  intention.  .  .  . 

I  think  this  statement  does  my  boyhood  justice,  and 
yet  I  have  my  doubts.  It  is  so  hard  now  to  say  what 
one  understood  and  what  one  did  not  understand.  It 
isn't  only  that  every  day  changed  one's  general  out- 
look, but  also  that  a  boy  fluctuates  between  phases 
of  quite  adult  understanding  and  phases  of  tawdrily 
magnificent  puerility.  Sometimes  I  myself  was  in  those 
tumbrils  that  went  along  Cheapside  to  the  Mansion 
House,  a  Sydney  Cartonesque  figure,  a  white  defeated 
Mirabeau;  sometimes  it  was  I  who  sat  judging  and 
condemning  and  ruling  (sleeping  in  my  clothes  and 
feeding  very  simply)  the  soul  and  autocrat  of  the  Pro- 
visional Government,  which  occupied,  of  all  inconven- 
ient places!  the  General  Post  Office  at  St.  Martin's-le- 
Grand!  .  .  . 

I  cannot  trace  the  development  of  my  ideas  at 
Cambridge,  but  I  believe  the  mere  physical  fact  of 
going  two  hours'  journey  away  from  London  gave  that 
place  for  the  first  time  an  effect  of  unity  in  my  imagi- 
nation. I  got  outside  London.  It  became  tangible  in- 
stead of  being  a  frame  almost  as  universal  as  sea 
and  sky. 

At  Cambridge  my  ideas  ceased  to  live  in  a  duologue; 
in  exchange  for  Britten,  with  whom,  however,  I  corre- 
sponded lengthily,  stylishly  and  self-consciously  for 
some  years,  I  had  now  a  set  of  congenial  friends.  I 
got  talk  with  some  of  the  younger  dons,  I  learnt  to 
speak  in  the  Union,  and  in  my  little  set  we  were  all 
pretty  busily  sharpening  each  other's  wits  and  correct- 
ing each  other's  interpretations.  Cambridge  made 
politics  personal  and  actual.  At  City  Merchants'  we 
had  had  no  sense  of  effective  contact;  we  boasted,  it  is 
true,  an  under  secretary  and  a  colonial  governor  among 


110      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

our  old  boys,  but  they  were  never  real  to  us;  such  dis- 
tinguished sons  as  returned  to  visit  the  old  school  were 
allusive  and  pleasant  in  the  best  Pinky  Dinky  style, 
and  pretended  to  be  in  earnest  about  nothing  but  our 
football  and  cricket,  to  mourn  the  abolition  of  "  water/' 
and  find  a  shuddering  personal  interest  in  the  ancient 
swishing  block.  At  Cambridge  I  felt  for  the  first  time 
that  I  touched  the  thing  that  was  going  on.  Real  liv- 
ing statesmen  came  down  to  debate  in  the  Union,  the 
older  dons  had  been  their  college  intimates,  their  sons 
and  nephews  expounded  them  to  us  and  made  them  real 
to  us.  They  invited  us  to  entertain  ideas;  I  found 
myself  for  the  first  time  in  my  life  expected  to  read 
and  think  and  discuss,  my  secret  vice  had  become  a 
virtue. 

That  combination-room  world  is  at  last  larger  and 
more  populous  and  various  than  the  world  of  school- 
masters. The  Shoesmiths  and  Naylors  who  had  been 
the  aristocracy  of  City  Merchants'  fell  into  their 
place  in  my  mind;  they  became  an  undistinguished 
mass  on  the  more  athletic  side  of  Pinky  Dinkyism,  and 
their  hostility  to  ideas  and  to  the  expression  of  ideas 
ceased  to  limit  and  trouble  me.  The  brighter  men  of 
each  generation  stay  up;  these  others  go  down  to 
propagate  their  tradition,  as  the  fathers  of  families,  as 
mediocre  professional  men,  as  assistant  masters  in 
schools.  Cambridge  which  perfects  them  is  by  the 
nature  of  things  least  oppressed  by  them, — except  when 
it  comes  to  a  vote  in  Convocation. 

We  were  still  in  those  days  under  the  shadow  of 
the  great  Victorians.  I  never  saw  Gladstone  (as  I 
never  set  eyes  on  the  old  Queen),  but  he  had  resigned 
office  only  a  year  before  I  went  up  to  Trinity,  and  the 
Combination  Rooms  were  full  of  personal  gossip  about 
him  and  Disraeli  and  the  other  big  figures  of  the 
gladiatorial  stage  of  Parlimentary  history,  talk  that 


ADOLESCENCE  111 

leaked  copiously  into  such  sets  as  mine.  The  ceiling 
of  our  guest  chamber  at  Trinity  was  glorious  with  the 
arms  of  Sir  William  Harcourt,  whose  Death  Duties 
had  seemed  at  first  like  a  socialist  dawn.  Mr.  Evesham 
we  asked  to  come  to  the  Union  every  year,  Masters, 
Chamberlain  and  the  old  Duke  of  Devonshire;  they 
did  not  come  indeed,  but  their  polite  refusals  brought 
us  all,  as  it  were,  within  personal  touch  of  them.  One 
heard  of  cabinet  councils  and  meetings  at  country 
houses.  Some  of  us,  pursuing  such  interests,  went  so 
far  as  to  read  political  memoirs  and  the  novels  of 
Disraeli  and  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward.  From  gossip, 
example  and  the  illustrated  newspapers  one  learnt 
something  of  the  way  in  which  parties  were  split, 
coalitions  formed,  how  permanent  officials  worked  and 
controlled  their  ministers,  how  measures  were  brought 
forward  and  projects  modified. 

And  while  I  was  getting  the  great  leading  figures 
on  the  political  stage,  who  had  been  presented  to  me 
in  my  schooldays  not  so  much  as  men  as  the  pantomimic 
monsters  of  political  caricature,  while  I  was  getting 
them  reduced  in  my  imagination  to  the  stature  of  hu- 
manity, and  their  motives  to  the  quality  of  impulses 
like  my  own,  I  was  also  acquiring  in  my  Tripos  work 
a  constantly  developing  and  enriching  conception  of 
the  world  of  men  as  a  complex  of  economic,  intellectual 
and  moral  processes.  .  .  . 

§  5 

Socialism  is  an  intellectual  Proteus,  but  to  the  men 
of  my  generation  it  came  as  the  revolt  of  the  workers. 
Rodbertus  we  never  heard  of  and  the  Fabian  Society 
we  did  not  understand;  Marx  and  Morris,  the  Chicago 
Anarchists,  Justice  and  Social  Democratic  Federation 
(as  it  was  then)  presented  socialism  to  our  minds. 
Hatherleigh  was  the  leading  exponent  of  the  new 
doctrines  in  Trinity,  and  the  figure  upon  his  wall  of  a 


112      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

huge-muscled,  black-haired  toiler  swaggering  sledge- 
hammer in  hand  across  a  revolutionary  barricade, 
seemed  the  quintessence  of  what  he  had  to  expound. 
Landlord  and  capitalist  had  robbed  and  enslaved  the 
workers,  and  were  driving  them  quite  automatically  to 
inevitable  insurrection.  They  would  arise  and  the  capi- 
talist system  would  flee  and  vanish  like  the  mists  before 
the  morning,  like  the  dews  before  the  sunrise,  giving 
place  in  the  most  simple  and  obvious  manner  to  an  era 
of  Right  and  Justice  and  Virtue  and  Well  Being,  and 
in  short  a  Perfectly  Splendid  Time. 

I  had  already  discussed  this  sort  of  socialism  under 
the  guidance  of  Britten,  before  I  went  up  to  Cambridge. 
It  was  all  mixed  up  with  ideas  about  freedom  and  nat- 
ural virtue  and  a  great  scorn  for  kings,  titles,  wealth 
and  officials,  and  it  was  symbolised  by  the  red  ties  we 
wore.  Our  simple  verdict  on  existing  arrangements  was 
that  they  were  "  all  wrong."  The  rich  were  robbers 
and  knew  it,  kings  and  princes  were  usurpers  and  knew 
it,  religious  teachers  were  impostors  in  league  with 
power,  the  economic  system  was  an  elaborate  plot  on 
the  part  of  the  few  to  expropriate  the  many.  We  went 
about  feeling  scornful  of  all  the  current  forms  of  life, 
forms  that  esteemed  themiselves  solid,  that  were,  we 
knew,  no  more  than  shapes  painted  on  a  curtain  that 
was  presently  to  be  torn  aside.  .  .  . 

It  was  Hatherleigh's  poster  and  his  capacity  for 
overstating  things,  I  think,  that  first  qualified  my  simple 
revolutionary  enthusiasm.  Perhaps  also  I  had  met  with 
Fabian  publications,  but  if  I  did  I  forget  the  circum- 
stances. And  no  doubt  my  innate  constructiveness 
with  its  practical  corollary  of  an  analytical  treatment 
of  the  material  supplied,  was  bound  to  push  me  on 
beyond  this  melodramatic  interpretation  of  human 
affairs. 

I  compared  that  Working  Man  of  the  poster  with 
any  sort  of  working  man  I  knew.  I  perceived  that 


ADOLESCENCE  113 

the  latter  was  not  going  to  change,  and  indeed  could 
not  under  any  stimulus  whatever  be  expected  to  change, 
into  the  former.  It  crept  into  my  mind  as  slowly  and 
surely  as  the  dawn  creeps  into  a  room  that  the  former 
was  not,  as  I  had  at  first  rather  glibly  assumed,  an 
"  ideal,"  but  a  complete  misrepresentation  of  the  quality 
and  possibilities  of  things. 

I  do  not  know  now  whether  it  was  during  my  school- 
days or  at  Cambridge  that  I  first  began  not  merely  to 
see  the  world  as  a  great  contrast  of  rich  and  poor,  but 
to  feel  the  massive  effect  of  that  multitudinous  majority 
of  people  who  toil  continually,  who  are  for  ever  anxious 
about  ways  and  means,  who  are  restricted,  ill  clothed, 
ill  fed  and  ill  housed,  who  have  limited  outlooks  and 
continually  suffer  misadventures,  hardships  and  dis- 
tresses through  the  want  of  money.  My  lot  had  fallen 
upon  the  fringe  of  the  possessing  minority;  if  I  did  not 
know  the  want  of  necessities  I  knew  shabbiness,  and 
the  world  that  let  me  go  on  to  a  university  education 
intimated  very  plainly  that  there  was  not  a  thing  be- 
yond the  primary  needs  that  my  stimulated  imagina- 
tion might  demand  that  it  would  not  be  an  effort  for  me 
to  secure.  A  certain  aggressive  radicalism  against  the 
ruling  and  propertied  classes  followed  almost  naturally 
from  my  circumstances.  It  did  not  at  first  connect  itself 
at  all  with  the  perception  of  a  planless  disorder  in  hu- 
man affairs  that  had  been  forced  upon  me  by  the  at- 
mosphere of  my  upbringing,  nor  did  it  link  me  in 
sympathy  with  any  of  the  profounder  realities  of  pov- 
erty. It  was  a  personal  independent  thing.  The  dingier 
people  one  saw  in  the  back  streets  and  lower  quarters  of 
Bromstead  and  Penge,  the  drift  of  dirty  children,  ragged 
old  women,  street  loafers,  grimy  workers  that  made  the 
social  background  of  London,  the  stories  one  heard  of 
privation  and  sweating,  only  joined  up  very  slowly  with 
the  general  propositions  I  was  making  about  life.  We 
could  become  splendidly  eloquent  about  the  social  revo- 


114      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

lution  and  the  triumph  of  the  Proletariat  after  the 
class  war,  and  it  was  only  by  a  sort  of  inspiration  that 
it  came  to  me  that  my  bedder,  a  garrulous  old  thing 
with  a  dusty  black  bonnet  over  one  eye  and  an  osten- 
tatiously clean  apron  outside  the  dark  mysteries  that 
clothed  her,  or  the  cheeky  little  ruffians  who  yelled 
papers  about  the  streets,  were  really  material  to  such 
questions. 

Directly  any  of  us  young  socialists  of  Trinity  found 
ourselves  in  immediate  contact  with  servants  or  cadgers 
or  gyps  or  bedders  or  plumbers  or  navvies  or  cabmen  or 
railway  porters  we  became  unconsciously  and  unthink- 
ingly aristocrats.  Our  voices  altered,  our  gestures 
altered.  We  behaved  just  as  all  the  other  men,  rich  or 
poor,  swatters  or  sportsmen  or  Pinky  Dinkys,  behaved, 
and  exactly  as  we  were  expected  to  behave.  On  the 
whole  it  is  a  population  of  poor  quality  round  about 
Cambridge,  rather  stunted  and  spiritless  and  very 
difficult  to  idealise.  That  theoretical  Working  Man  of 
ours! — if  we  felt  the  clash  at  all  we  explained  it,  I 
suppose,  by  assuming  that  he  came  from  another  part  of 
the  country;  Esmeer,  I  remember,  who  lived  somewhere 
in  the  Fens,  was  very  eloquent  about  the  Cornish  fish- 
ermen, and  Hatherleigh,  who  was  a  Hampshire  man, 
assured  us  we  ought  to  know  the  Scottish  miner.  My 
private  fancy  was  for  the  Lancashire  operative  because 
of  his  co-operative  societies,  and  because  what  Lanca- 
shire thinks  to-day  England  thinks  to-morrow.  .  .  . 
And  also  I  had  never  been  in  Lancashire. 

By  little  increments  of  realisation  it  was  that  the 
profounder  verities  of  the  problem  of  socialism  came  to 
me.  It  helped  me  very  much  that  I  had  to  go  down 
to  the  Potteries  several  times  to  discuss  my  future  with 
my  uncle  and  guardian ;  I  walked  about  and  saw  Bursley 
Wakes  and  much  of  the  human  aspects  of  organised 
industrialism  at  close  quarters  for  the  first  time.  The 


ADOLESCENCE  115 

picture  of  a  splendid  Working  Man  cheated  out  of  his 
innate  glorious  possibilities,  and  presently  to  arise  and 
dash  this  scoundrelly  and  scandalous  system  of  private 
ownership  to  fragments,  began  to  give  place  to  a 
limitless  spectacle  of  inefficiency,  to  a  conception  of 
millions  of  people  not  organised  as  they  should  be, 
not  educated  as  they  should  be,  not  simply  prevented 
from  but  incapable  of  nearly  every  sort  of  beauty, 
mostly  kindly  and  well  meaning,  mostly  incompetent, 
mostly  obstinate,  and  easily  humbugged  and  easily  di- 
verted. Even  the  tragic  and  inspiring  idea  of  Marx,  that 
the  poor  were  nearing  a  limit  of  painful  experience, 
and  awakening  to  a  sense  of  intolerable  wrongs,  began 
to  develop  into  the  more  appalling  conception  that  the 
poor  were  simply  in  a  witless  uncomfortable  inconclusive 
way — "  muddling  along " ;  that  they  wanted  nothing 
very  definitely  nor  very  urgently,  that  mean  fears  en- 
slaved them  and  mean  satisfactions  decoyed  them,  that 
they  took  the  very  gift  of  life  itself  with  a  spiritless 
lassitude,  hoarding  it,  being  rather  anxious  not  to  lose 
it  than  to  use  it  in  any  way  whatever. 

The  complete  development  of  that  realisation  was 
the  work  of  many  years.  I  had  only  the  first  intima- 
tions at  Cambridge.  But  I  did  have  intimations. 
Most  acutely  do  I  remember  the  doubts  that  followed 
the  visit  of  Chris  Robinson.  Chris  Robinson  was 
heralded  by  such  heroic  anticipations,  and  he  was  so 
entirely  what  we  had  not  anticipated. 

Hatherleigh  got  him  to  come,  arranged  a  sort  of 
meeting  for  him  at  Redmayne's  rooms  in  King's,  and 
was  very  proud  and  proprietorial.  It  failed  to  stir 
Cambridge  at  all  profoundly.  Beyond  a  futile  attempt 
to  screw  up  Hatherleigh  made  by  some  inexpert  duffers 
who  used  nails  instead  of  screws  and  gimlets,  there  was 
no  attempt  to  rag.  Next  day  Chris  Robinson  went  and 
spoke  at  Bennett  Hall  in  Newnham  College,  and  left 
Cambridge  in  the  evening  amidst  the  cheers  of  twenty 


116      THE  NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

men  or  so.  Socialism  was  at  such  a  low  ebb  politically 
in  those  days  that  it  didn't  even  rouse  men  to  opposi- 
tion. 

And  there  sat  Chris  under  that  flamboyant  and  heroic 
Worker  of  the  poster,  a  little  wrinkled  grey-bearded 
apologetic  man  in  ready-made  clothes,  with  watchful 
innocent  brown  eyes  and  a  persistent  and  invincible  air 
of  being  out  of  his  element.  He  sat  with  his  stout 
boots  tucked  up  under  his  chair,  and  clung  to  a  teacup 
and  saucer  and  looked  away  from  us  into  the  fire,  and 
we  all  sat  about  on  tables  and  chair-arms  and  window- 
sills  and  boxes  and  anywhere  except  upon  chairs  after 
the  manner  of  young  men.  The  only  other  chair  whose 
seat  was  occupied  was  the  one  containing  his  knitted 
woollen  comforter  and  his  picturesque  old  beach-pho- 
tographer's hat.  We  were  all  shy  and  didn't  know 
how  to  take  hold  of  him  now  we  had  got  him,  and, 
which  was  disconcertingly  unanticipated,  he  was  mani- 
festly having  the  same  difficulty  with  us.  We  had  ex- 
pected to  be  gripped. 

"  I'll  not  be  knowing  what  to  say  to  these  Chaps," 
he  repeated  with  a  north-country  quality  in  his  speech. 

We  made  reassuring  noises. 

The  Ambassador  of  the  Workers  stirred  his  tea 
earnestly  through  an  uncomfortable  pause. 

"  I'd  best  tell  'em  something  of  how  things  are  in 
Lancashire,  what  with  the  new  machines  and  all  that," 
he  speculated  at  last  with  red  reflections  in  his  thought- 
ful eyes. 

We  had  an  inexcusable  dread  that  perhaps  he  would 
make  a  mess  of  the  meeting. 

But  when  he  was  no  longer  in  the  unaccustomed 
meshes  of  refined  conversation,  but  speaking  with  an 
audience  before  him,  he  became  a  different  man.  He 
declared  he  would  explain  to  us  just  exactly  what  social- 
ism was,  and  went  on  at  once  to  an  impassioned  con- 
trast of  social  conditions.  "You  young  men,"  he  said 


ADOLESCENCE  117 

"  come  from  homes  of  luxury ;  every  need  you  feel  is 
supplied " 

We  sat  and  stood  and  sprawled  about  him,  occupy- 
ing every  inch  of  Redmayne's  floor  space  except  the 
hearthrug-platform,  and  we  listened  to  him  and  thought 
him  over.  He  was  the  voice  of  wrongs  that  made  us 
indignant  and  eager.  We  forgot  for  a  time  that  he 
had  been  shy  and  seemed  not  a  little  incompetent,  his 
provincial  accent  became  a  beauty  of  his  earnest  speech, 
we  were  carried  away  by  his  indignations.  We  looked 
with  shining  eyes  at  one  another  and  at  the  various 
dons  who  had  dropped  in  and  were  striving  to  main- 
tain a  front  of  judicious  severity.  We  felt  more  and 
more  that  social  injustice  must  cease,  and  cease  forth- 
with. We  felt  we  could  not  sleep  upon  it.  At  the  end 
we  clapped  and  murmured  our  applause  and  wanted 
badly  to  cheer. 

Then  like  a  lancet  stuck  into  a  bladder  came  the 
heckling.  Denson,  that  indolent,  liberal-minded  scep- 
tic, did  most  of  the  questioning.  He  lay  contorted  in 
a  chair,  with  his  ugly  head  very  low,  his  legs  crossed 
and  his  left  boot  very  high,  and  he  pointed  his  re- 
marks with  a  long  thin  hand  and  occasionally  adjusted 
the  unstable  glasses  that  hid  his  watery  eyes.  "  I  don't 
want  to  carp,"  he  began.  "  The  present  system,  I  ad- 
mit, stands  condemned.  Every  present  system  always 
has  stood  condemned  in  the  minds  of  intelligent  men. 
But  where  it  seems  to  me  you  get  thin,  is  just  where 
everybody  has  been  thin,  and  that's  when  you  come  to 
the  remedy." 

"Socialism,"  said  Chris  Robinson,  as  if  it  answered 
everything,  and  Hatherleigh  said  "  Hear !  Hear !  "  very 
resolutely. 

"  I  suppose  I  ought  to  take  that  as  an  answer,"  said 
Denson,  getting  his  shoulder-blades  well  down  to  the 
seat  of  his  chair;  "but  I  don't.  I  don't,  you  know. 
It's  rather  a  shame  to  cross-examine  you  after  this  fine 


118      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

address  of  yours  " — Chris  Robinson  on  the  hearthrug 
made  acquiescent  and  inviting  noises — "  but  the  real 
question  remains  how  exactly  are  you  going  to  end  all 
these  wrongs?  There  are  the  administrative  questions. 
If  you  abolish  the  private  owner,  I  admit  you  abolish  a 
very  complex  and  clumsy  way  of  getting  businesses 
run,  land  controlled  and  things  in  general  administered, 
but  you  don't  get  rid  of  the  need  of  administration,  you 
know." 

"  Democracy/*  said  Chris  Robinson. 

"Organised  somehow,"  said  Denson.  "And  it's  just 
the  How  perplexes  me.  I  can  quite  easily  imagine  a 
socialist  state  administered  in  a  sort  of  scrambling 
tumult  that  would  be  worse  than  anything  we  have  got 
now." 

"  Nothing  could  be  worse  than  things  are  now,"  said 
Chris  Robinson.  "  I  have  seen  little  children " 

"  I  submit  life  on  an  ill-provisioned  raft,  for  example, 
could  easily  be  worse — or  life  in  a  beleagured  town." 

Murmurs. 

They  wrangled  for  some  time,  and  it  had  the  effect 
upon  me  of  coming  out  from  the  glow  of  a  good 
matinee  performance  into  the  cold  daylight  of  late 
afternoon.  Chris  Robinson  did  not  shine  in  conflict 
with  Denson;  he  was  an  orator  and  not  a  dialectician, 
and  he  missed  Denson's  points  and  displayed  a  disposi- 
tion to  plunge  into  untimely  pathos  and  indignation. 
And  Denson  hit  me  curiously  hard  with  one  of  his 
shafts.  "  Suppose,"  he  said,  "  you  found  yourself  prime 
minister " 

I  looked  at  Chris  Robinson,  bright-eyed  and  his 
hair  a  little  ruffled  and  his  whole  being  rhetorical,  and 
measured  him  against  the  huge  machine  of  government 
muddled  and  mysterious.  Oh !  but  I  was  perplexed ! 

And  then  we  took  him  back  to  Hatherleigh's  rooms 
and  drank  beer  and  smoked  about  him  while  he  nursed 
his  knee  with  hairy  wristed  hands  that  protruded  from 


ADOLESCENCE  119 

his  flannel  shirt,  and  drank  lemonade  under  the  cartoon 
of  that  emancipated  Worker,  and  we  had  a  great  dis- 
cursive talk  with  him. 

"Eh!  you  should  see  our  big  meetings  up  north?" 
he  said. 

Denson  had  ruffled  him  and  worried  him  a  good 
deal,  and  ever  and  again  he  came  back  to  that  discus- 
sion. "  It's  all  very  easy  for  your  learned  men  to  sit 
and  pick  holes,"  he  said,  "  while  the  children  suffer 
and  die.  They  don't  pick  holes  up  north.  They  mean 
business." 

He  talked,  and  that  was  the  most  interesting  part 
of  it  all,  of  his  going  to  work  in  a  factory  when  he 
was  twelve — "  when  you  Chaps  were  all  with  your  mam- 
mies " — and  how  he  had  educated  himself  of  nights 
until  he  would  fall  asleep  at  his  reading. 

"  It's  made  many  of  us  keen  for  all  our  lives,"  he 
remarked,  "  all  that  clemming  for  education  Why ! 
I  longed  all  through  one  winter  to  read  a  bit  of  Dar- 
win. I  must  know  about  this  Darwin  if  I  die  for  it,  I 
said.  And  I  couldno*  get  the  book." 

Hatherleigh  made  an  enthusiastic  noise  and  drank 
beer  at  him  with  round  eyes  over  the  mug. 

"  Well,  anyhow  I  wasted  no  time  on  Greek  and 
Latin,"  said  Chris  Robinson.  "  And  one  learns  to  go 
straight  at  a  ching  without  splitting  straws.  One  gets 
hold  of  the  Elementals." 

(Well,  did  they?  That  was  the  gist  of  my  per- 
plexity.) 

"  One  doesn't  quibble,"  he  said,  returning  to  his 
rankling  memory  of  Denson,  "while  men  decay  and 
starve." 

"  But  suppose,"  I  said,  suddenly  dropping  into  op- 
position, "  the  alternatve  is  to  risk  a  worse  disaster — 
or  do  something  patently  futile." 

"  I  don't  follow  that,"  said  Chris  Robinson.  "  We 
don't  propose  anything  futile,  so  far  as  I  can  see." 


120      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

§  6 

The  prevailing  force  in  my  undergraduate  days  was 
not  Socialism  but  Kiplingism.  Our  set  was  quite  ex- 
ceptional in  its  socialistic  professions.  And  we  were 
all,  you  must  understand,  very  distinctly  Imperialists 
also,  and  professed  a  vivid  sense  of  the  "  White  Man's 
Burden." 

It  is  a  little  difficult  now  to  get  back  to  the  feelings 
of  that  period;  Kipling  has  since  been  so  mercilessly 
and  exhaustively  mocked,  criticised  and  torn  to  shreds; 
— never  was  a  man  so  violently  exalted  and  then,  him- 
self assisting,  so  relentlessly  called  down.  But  in  the 
middle  nineties  this  spectacled  and  moustached  little 
figure  with  its  heavy  chin  and  its  general  effect  of 
vehement  gesticulation,  its  wild  shouts  of  boyish  en- 
thusiasm for  effective  force,  its  lyric  delight  in  the 
sounds  and  colours,  in  the  very  odours  of  empire,  its 
wonderful  discovery  of  machinery  and  cotton  waste  and 
the  under  officer  and  the  engineer,  and  "  shop "  as  a 
poetic  dialect,  became  almost  a  national  symbol.  He 
got  hold  of  us  wonderfully,  he  filled  us  with  tinkling 
and  haunting  quotations,  he  stirred  Britten  and  myself 
to  futile  imitations,  he  coloured  the  very  idiom  of  our 
conversation.  He  rose  to  his  climax  with  his  "  Reces- 
sional," while  I  was  still  an  undergraduate. 

What  did  he  give  me  exactly? 

He  helped  to  broaden  my  geographical  sense  im- 
mensely, and  he  provided  phrases  for  just  that  desire 
for  discipline  and  devotion  and  organised  effort  the 
Socialism  of  our  time  failed  to  express,  that  the  cur- 
rent socialist  movement  still  fails,  I  think,  to  express. 
The  sort  of  thing  that  follows,  for  example,  tore  some- 
thing out  of  my  inmost  nature  and  gave  it  a  shape, 
and  I  took  it  back  from  him  shaped  and  let  much  of 
the  rest  of  him,  the  tumult  and  the  bullying,  the  hys- 


ADOLESCENCE  121 

teria   and   the   impatience,  the  incoherence   and   incon- 
sistency, go  uncriticised  for  the  sake  of  it: — 

"  Keep  ye  the  Law — be  swift  in  all  obedience — 
Clear  the  land  of  evil,  drive  the  road  and  bridge  the  fcrd, 
Make  ye  sure  to  each  his  own 
That  he  reap  where  he  hath  sown; 

By  the  peace  among  Our  peoples  let  men  know  we  serve  the 
Lord!" 

And  then  again,  and  for  all  our  later  criticism,  this 
sticks  in  my  mind,  sticks  there  now  as  quintessential 
wisdom : 

The  'eathen  in  'is  blindness  bows  down  to  wood  an'  stone ; 

'E  don't  obey  no  orders  unless  they  is  Ms  own; 

'E  keeps  'is  side-arms  awful:  'e  leaves  'em  all  about 

An'  then  cdmes  up  the  regiment  an'  pokes  the  'eathen  out. 
All  along  o'  dirtiness,  all  along  o'  mess, 
All  along  o'  doin'  things  rather-more-or-less, 
All  along  of  abby-nay,  kul,  an'  hazar-ho, 
Mind  you  keep  your  rifle  an'  yourself  jus'  so!" 

It  is  after  all  a  secondary  matter  that  Kipling,  not 
having  been  born  and  brought  up  in  Bromstead  and 
Penge,  and  the  war  in  South  Africa  being  yet  in  the 
womb  of  time,  could  quite  honestly  entertain  the  now 
remarkable  delusion  that  England  had  her  side-arms 
at  that  time  kept  anything  but  "  awful."  He  learnt 
better,  and  we  all  learnt  with  him  in  the  dark  years 
of  exasperating  and  humiliating  struggle  that  followed, 
and  I  do  not  see  that  we  fellow  learners  are  justified 
in  turning  resentfully  upon  him  for  a  common  ignorance 
and  assumption.  .  .  . 

South  Africa  seems  always  painted  on  the  back  cloth 
of  my  Cambridge  memories.  How  immense  those  dis- 
asters seemed  at  the  time,  disasters  our  facile  English 
world  has  long  since  contrived  in  any  edifying  or  profit- 
able sense  to  forget!  How  we  thrilled  to  the  shout- 


122      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

ing  newspaper  sellers  as  the  first  false  flush  of  victory 
gave  place  to  the  realisation  of  defeat.  Far  away 
there  our  army  showed  itself  human,  mortal  and  human 
in  the  sight  of  all  the  world,  the  pleasant  officers  we 
had  imagined  would  change  to  wonderful  heroes  at  the 
first  crackling  of  rifles,  remained  the  pleasant,  rather 
incompetent  men  they  had  always  been,  failing  to 
imagine,  failing  to  plan  and  co-operate,  failing  to  grip. 
And  the  common  soldiers,  too,  they  were  just  what  our 
streets  and  country-side  had  made  them,,  no  sudden 
magic  came  out  of  the  war  bugles  for  them.  Neither 
splendid  nor  disgraceful  were  they, — just  ill-trained 
and  fairly  plucky  and  wonderfully  good-tempered  men 
— paying  for  it.  And  how  it  lowered  our  vitality  all 
that  first  winter  to  hear  of  Nicholson's  Nek,  and  then 
presently  close  upon  one  another,  to  realise  the  bloody 
waste  of  Magersfontein,  the  shattering  retreat  from 
Stormberg,  Colenso — Colenso,  that  blundering  battle, 
with  White,  as  it  seemed,  in  Ladysmith  near  the  point 
of  surrender!  and  so  through  the  long  unfolding  cat- 
alogue of  bleak  disillusionments,  of  aching,  unconcealed 
anxiety  lest  worse  should  follow.  To  advance  upon 
your  enemy  singing  about  his  lack  of  cleanliness  and 
method  went  out  of  fashion  altogether!  The  dirty 
retrogressive  Boer  vanished  from  our  scheme  of  il- 
lusion. 

All  through  my  middle  Cambridge  period,  the  guns 
boomed  and  the  rifles  crackled  away  there  on  the  veldt, 
and  the  horsemen  rode  and  the  tale  of  accidents  and 
blundering  went  on.  Men,  mules,  horses,  stores  anc 
money  poured  into  South  Africa,  and  the  convalescen 
wounded  streamed  home.  I  see  it  in  my  memory  as 
if  I  had  looked  at  it  through  a  window  instead  oi 
through  the  pages  of  the  illustrated  papers;  I  recall  as 
if  I  had  been  there  the  wide  open  spaces,  the  raggec 
hillsides,,  the  open  order  attacks  of  helmeted  men  in 


ADOLESCENCE  123 

khaki,  the  scarce  visible  smoke  of  the  guns,  the 
wrecked  trains  in  great  lonely  places,  the  burnt  isolated 
farms,  and  at  last  the  blockhouses  and  the  fences  of 
barbed  wire  uncoiling  and  spreading  for  endless  miles 
across  the  desert,  netting  the  elusive  enemy  until  at 
last,  though  he  broke  the  meshes  again  and  again,  we 
had  him  in  the  toils.  If  one's  attention  strayed  in  the 
lecture-room  it  wandered  to  those  battle-fields. 

And  that  imagined  panorama  of  war  unfolds  to  an 
accompaniment  of  yelling  newsboys  in  the  narrow  old 
Cambridge  streets,  of  the  flicker  of  papers  hastily 
bought  and  torn  open  in  the  twilight,  of  the  doubt- 
ful reception  of  doubtful  victories,  and  the  insensate 
rej  oicings  at  last  that  seemed  to  some  of  us  more  shame- 
ful than  defeats.  .  .  . 

§  7 

A  book  that  stands  out  among  these  memories,  that 
stimulated  me  immensely  so  that  I  forced  it  upon  my 
companions,  half  in  the  spirit  of  propaganda  and  half 
to  test  it  by  their  comments,  was  Meredith's  One  of 
Our  Conquerors.  It  is  one  of  the  books  that  have 
made  me.  In  that  I  got  a  supplement  and  corrective 
of  Kipling.  It  was  the  first  detached  and  adverse 
criticism  of  the  Englishman  I  had  ever  encountered. 
It  must  have  been  published  already  nine  or  ten  years 
when  I  read  it.  The  country  had  paid  no  heed  to  it, 
had  gone  on  to  the  expensive  lessons  of  the  War  be- 
cause of  the  dull  aversion  our  people  feel  for  all  such 
intimations,  and  so  I  could  read  it  as  a  book  justified. 
The  war  endorsed  its  every  word  for  me,  underlined 
each  warning  indication  of  the  gigantic  dangers  that 
gathered  against  our  system  across  the  narrow  seas. 
It  discovered  Europe  to  me,  as  watching  and  critical. 

But  while  I  could  respond  to  all  its  criticisms  of 
my  country's  intellectual  indolence,  of  my  country's 


124      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

want  of  training  and  discipline  and  moral  courage,  I 
remember  that  the  idea  that  on  the  continent  there 
were  other  peoples  going  ahead  of  us,  mentally  alert 
while  we  fumbled,  disciplined  while  we  slouched,  ag- 
gressive and  preparing  to  bring  our  Imperial  pride  to 
a  reckoning,  was  extremely  novel  and  distasteful  to  me. 
It  set  me  worrying  of  nights.  It  put  all  my  projects 
for  social  and  political  reconstruction  upon  a  new  un- 
comfortable footing.  It  made  them  no  longer  merely 
desirable  but  urgent.  Instead  of  pride  and  the  love 
of  making  one  might  own  to  a  baser  motive.  Under 
Kipling's  sway  I  had  a  little  forgotten  the  continent 
of  Europe,  treated  it  as  a  mere  envious  echo  to  our 
own  world-wide  display.  I  began  now  to  have  a  dis- 
turbing sense  as  it  were  of  busy  searchlights  over  the 
horizon.  .  .  . 

One  consequence  of  the  patriotic  chagrin  Meredith 
produced  in  me  was  an  attempt  to  belittle  his  merit. 
"  It  isn't  a  good  novel,  anyhow,"  I  said. 

The  charge  I  brought  against  it  was,  I  remember, 
a  lack  of  unity.  It  professed  to  be  a  study  of  the 
English  situation  in  the  early  nineties,  but  it  was  all 
deflected,  I  said,  and  all  the  interest  was  confused  by 
the  story  of  Victor  Radnor's  fight  with  society  to  vin- 
dicate the  woman  he  had  loved  and  never  married. 
Now  in  the  retrospect  and  with  a  mind  full  of  bitter 
enlightenment,  I  can  do  Meredith  justice,  and  admit 
the  conflict  was  not  only  essential  but  cardinal  in  his 
picture,  that  the  terrible  inflexibility  of  the  rich  aunts 
and  the  still  more  terrible  claim  of  Mrs.  Burman  Rad- 
nor, the  "infernal  punctilio,"  and  Dudley  Sowerby's 
limitations,  were  the  central  substance  of  that  inalert- 
ness  the  book  set  itself  to  assail.  So  many  things  have 
been  brought  together  in  my  mind  that  were  once  re- 
motely separated.  A  people  that  will  not  valiantly  face 
and  understand  and  admit  love  and  passion  can  under- 


ADOLESCENCE  125 

stand  nothing  whatever.  But  in  those  days  what  is 
now  just  obvious  truth  to  me  was  altogether  outside  my 
range  of  comprehension.  .  .  . 

§  8 

As  I  seek  to  recapitulate  the  interlacing  growth  of 
my  apprehension  of  the  world,  as  I  flounder  among  the 
half-remembered  developments  that  found  me  a  crude 
schoolboy  and  left  me  a  man,  there  comes  out,  as  if  it 
stood  for  all  the  rest,  my  first  holiday  abroad.  That 
did  not  happen  until  I  was  twenty-two.  I  was  a  fellow 
of  Trinity,  and  the  Peace  of  Vereeniging  had  just 
been  signed. 

I  went  with  a  man  named  Willersley,  a  man  some 
years  senior  to  myself,  who  had  just  missed  a  fellow- 
ship and  the  higher  division  of  the  Civil  Service,  and 
who  had  become  an  enthusiastic  member  of  the  London 
School  Board,  upon  which  the  cumulative  vote  and  the 
support  of  the  "  advanced "  people  had  placed  him. 
He  had,  like  myself,  a  small  independent  income  that 
relieved  him  of  any  necessity  to  earn  a  living,  and  he 
had  a  kindred  craving  for  social  theorising  and  some 
form  of  social  service.  He  had  sought  my  acquaint- 
ance after  reading  a  paper  of  mine  (begotten  by  the 
visit  of  Chris  Robinson)  on  the  limits  of  pure  democ- 
racy. It  had  marched  with  some  thoughts  of  his  own. 

We  went  by  train  to  Spiez  on  the  Lake  of  Thun, 
then  up  the  Gemmi,  and  thence  with  one  or  two  halts 
and  digressions  and  a  little  modest  climbing  we  crossed 
over  by  the  Antrona  pass  (on  which  we  were  benighted) 
into  Italy,  and  by  way  of  Domo  D'ossola  and  the  Santa 
Maria  Maggiore  valley  to  Cannobio,  and  thence  up  the 
lake  to  Locarno  (where,  as  I  shall  tell,  we  stayed  some 
eventful  days)  afjSd  so  up  the  Val  Maggia  and  over  to 
Airolo  and  home. 

As  I  write  of  that  long  tramp  of  ours,  something  of 


126      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

its  freshness  and  enlargement  returns  to  me.  I  feel 
again  the  faint  pleasant  excitement  of  the  boat  train, 
the  trampling  procession  of  people  with  hand  baggage 
and  laden  porters  along  the  platform  of  the  Folkestone 
pier,  the  scarcely  perceptible  swaying  of  the  moored 
boat  beneath  our  feet.  Then,  very  obvious  and  simple, 
the  little  emotion  of  standing  out  from  the  homeland 
and  seeing  the  long  white  Kentish  cliffs  recede.  One 
walked  about  the  boat  doing  one's  best  not  to  feel 
absurdly  adventurous,  and  presently  a  movement  of 
people  directed  one's  attention  to  a  white  lighthouse 
on  a  cliff  to  the  east  of  us,  coming  up  suddenly;  and 
then  one  turned  to  scan  the  little  different  French 
coast  villages,  and  then,  sliding  by  in  a  pale  sunshine 
came  a  long  wooden  pier  with  oddly  dressed  children 
upon  it,  and  the  clustering  town  of  Boulogne. 

One  took  it  all  with  the  outward  calm  that  became 
a  young  man  of  nearly  three  and  twenty,  but  one  was 
alive  to  one's  finger-tips  with  pleasing  little  stimula- 
tions. The  custom  house  examination  excited  one,  the 
strangeness  of  a  babble  in  a  foreign  tongue;  one  found 
the  French  of  City  Merchants'  and  Cambridge  a  shy 
and  viscous  flow,  and  then  one  was  standing  in  the 
train  as  it  went  slowly  through  the  rail-laid  street 
to  Boulogne  Ville,  and  one  looked  out  at  the  world  in 
French,  porters  in  blouses,  workmen  in  enormous  pur- 
ple trousers,  police  officers  in  peaked  caps  instead  of 
helmets  and  romantically  cloaked,  big  carts,  all  on  two 
wheels  instead  of  four,  green  shuttered  casements  in- 
stead of  sash  windows,  and  great  numbers  of  neatly 
dressed  women  in  economical  mourning. 

"  Oh !  there's  a  priest ! "  one  said,  and  was  betrayed 
into  suchlike  artless  cries. 

It  was  a  real  other  world,  with  different  government 
and  different  methods,  and  in  the  night  one  was  roused 
from  uneasy  slumbers  and  sat  blinking  and  surly, 


ADOLESCENCE  127 

wrapped  up  in  one's  couverture  and  with  one's  oreiller 
all  awry,  to  encounter  a  new  social  phenomenon,  the 
German  official,  so  different  in  manner  from  the  Brit- 
ish; and  when  one  woke  again  after  that  one  had  come 
to  Bale,  and  out  one  tumbled  to  get  coffee  in  Switzer- 
land. .  .  . 

I  have  been  over  that  route  dozens  of  times  since, 
but  it  still  revives  a  certain  lingering  youthfulness,  a 
certain  sense  of  cheerful  release  in  me. 

I  remember  that  I  and  Willersley  became  very  soci- 
ological as  we  ran  on  to  Spiez,  and  made  all  sorts  of 
generalisations  from  the  steeply  sloping  fields  on  the 
hillsides,  and  from  the  people  we  saw  on  platforms  and 
from  little  differences  in  the  way  things  were  done. 

The  clean  prosperity  of  Bale  and  Switzerland,  the 
big  clean  stations,  filled  me  with  patriotic  misgivings, 
as  I  thought  of  the  vast  dirtiness  of  London,  the  mean 
dirtiness  of  Cambridgeshire.  It  came  to  me  that  per- 
haps my  scheme  of  international  values  was  all  wrong, 
that  quite  stupendous  possibilities  and  challenges  for 
us  and  our  empire  might  be  developing  here — and  I 
recalled  Meredith's  Skepsey  in  France  with  a  new 
understanding. 

Willersley  had  dressed  himself  in  a  world-worn  Nor- 
folk suit  of  greenish  grey  tweeds  that  ended  unfamil- 
iarly  at  his  rather  impending,  spectacled,  intellectual 
visage.  I  didn't,  I  remember,  like  the  contrast  of  him 
with  the  drilled  Swiss  and  Germans  about  us.  Con- 
vict coloured  stockings  and  vast  hobnail  boots  finished 
him  below,  and  all  his  luggage  was  a  borrowed  ruck- 
sac  that  he  had  tied  askew.  He  did  not  want  to  shave 
in  the  train,  but  I  made  him  at  one  of  the  Swiss  sta- 
tions— I  dislike  these  Oxford  slovenlinesses — and  then, 
confound  him!  he  cut  himself  and  bled.  .  .  . 

Next  morning  we  were  breathing  a  thin  exhilarating 
air  that  seemed  to  have  washed  our  very  veins  to  an 


128      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

incredible  cleanliness,  and  eating  hard-boiled  eggs  in  a 
vast  clear  space  of  rime-edged  rocks,  snow-mottled, 
above  a  blue-gashed  glacier.  All  about  us  the  mon- 
strous rock  surfaces  rose  towards  the  shining  peaks 
above,  and  there  were  winding  moraines  from  which 
the  ice  had  receded,  and  then  dark  clustering  fir  trees 
far  below. 

I  had  an  extraordinary  feeling  of  having  come  out 
of  things,  of  being  outside. 

"  But  this  is  the  round  world ! "  I  said,  with  a  sense 
of  never  having  perceived  it  before ;  "  this  is  the  round 
world ! " 

§9 

That  holiday  was  full  of  big  comprehensive  effects; 
the  first  view  of  the  Rhone  valley  and  the  distant 
Valaisian  Alps,  for  example,  which  we  saw  from  the 
shoulder  of  the  mountain  above  the  Gemmi,  and  the 
early  summer  dawn  breaking  over  Italy  as  we  moved 
from  our  night's  crouching  and  munched  bread  and 
chocolate  and  stretched  our  stiff  limbs  among  the 
tumbled  and  precipitous  rocks  that  hung  over  Lake 
Cingolo,  and  surveyed  the  winding  tiring  rocky  track 
going  down  and  down  to  Antronapiano. 

And  our  thoughts  were  as  comprehensive  as  our  im- 
pressions. Willersley's  mind  abounded  in  historical 
matter;  he  had  an  inaccurate  abundant  habit  of  topo- 
graphical reference;  he  made  me  see  and  trace  and  see 
again  the  Roman  Empire  sweep  up  these  winding  val- 
leys, and  the  coming  of  the  first  great  Peace  among 
the  warring  tribes  of  men.  .  .  . 

In  the  retrospect  each  of  us  seems  to  have  been  talk- 
ing about  our  outlook  almost  continually.  Each  of  us, 
you  see,  was  full  of  the  same  question,  very  near  and 
altogether  predominant  to  us,  the  question :  "  What  am 
I  going  to  do  with  my  life?"  He  saw  it  almost  as 
importantly  as  I,  but  from  a  different  angle,  because 


ADOLESCENCE  129 

his  choice  was  largely  made  and  mine  still  hung  in  the 
balance. 

"  I  feel  we  might  do  so  many  things/'  I  said,  "  and 
everything  that  calls  one,  calls  one  away  from  some- 
thing else." 

Willersley  agreed  without  any  modest  disavowals. 

"We  have  got  to  think  out/'  he  said,  "just  what 
we  are  and  what  we  are  up  to.  We've  got  to  do  that 
now.  And  then — it's  one  of  those  questions  it  is  in- 
advisable to  reopen  subsequently." 

He  beamed  at  me  through  his  glasses.  The  sen- 
tentious use  of  long  words  was  a  playful  habit  with 
him,  that  and  a  slight  deliberate  humour,  habits  oc- 
casional Extension  Lecturing  was  doing  very  much  to 
intensify. 

"You've  made  your  decision?" 

He  nodded  with  a  peculiar  forward  movement  of 
his  head. 

"  How  would  you  put  it  ?  " 

"  Social  Service — education.  Whatever  else  matters 
or  doesn't  matter,  it  seems  to  me  there  is  one  thing  we 
must  have  and  increase,  and  that  is  the  number  of  peo- 
ple who  can  think  a  little — and  have " — he  beamed 
again — "  an  adequate  sense  of  causation." 

"  You're  sure  it's  worth  while." 

"  For  me — certainly.  I  don't  discuss  that  any 
more." 

"  I  don't  limit  myself  too  narrowly/'  he  added. 
"  After  all,  the  work  is  all  one.  We  who  know,  we 
who  feel,  are  building  the  great  modern  state,  joining 
wall  to  wall  and  way  to  way,  the  new  great  England 
rising  out  of  the  decaying  old  .  .  .  we  are  the  real 
statesmen — I  like  that  use  of  'statesmen/  .  .  ." 

"Yes,"  I  said  with  many  doubts.  "Yes,  of 
course.  .  .  ." 

Willersley    is    middle-aged    now,    with    silver    in    his 


130      THE  NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

hair  and  a  deepening  benevolence  in  his  always  amiable 
face,  and  he  has  very  fairly  kept  his  word.  He  has 
lived  for  social  service  and  to  do  vast  masses  of  use- 
ful, undistinguished,  fertilising  work.  Think  of  the 
days  of  arid  administrative  plodding  and  of  contention 
still  more  arid  and  unrewarded,  that  he  must  have  spent ! 
His  little  affectations  of  gesture  and  manner,  imitative 
affectations  for  the  most  part,  have  increased,  and  the 
humorous  beam  and  the  humorous  intonations  have  be- 
come a  thing  he  puts  on  every  morning  like  an  old 
coat.  His  devotion  is  mingled  with  a  considerable 
whimsicality,  and  they  say  he  is  easily  flattered  by 
subordinates  and  easily  offended  into  opposition  by  col- 
leagues; he  has  made  mistakes  at  times  and  followed 
wrong  courses,  still  there  he  is,  a  flat  contradiction  to 
all  the  ordinary  doctrine  of  motives,  a  man  who  has 
foregone  any  chances  of  wealth  and  profit,  foregone 
any  easier  paths  to  distinction,  foregone  marriage  and 
parentage,  in  order  to  serve  the  community.  He  does 
it  without  any  fee  or  reward  except  his  personal  self- 
satisfaction  in  doing  this  work,  and  he  does  it  without 
any  hope  of  future  joys  and  punishments,  for  he  is  an 
implacable  Rationalist.  No  doubt  he  idealises  himself 
a  little,  and  dreams  of  recognition.  No  doubt  he  gets 
his  pleasure  from  a  sense  of  power,  from  the  spending 
and  husbanding  of  large  sums  of  public  money,  and 
from  the  inevitable  proprietorship  he  must  feel  in  the 
fair,  fine,  well-ordered  schools  he  has  done  so  much 
to  develop.  "But  for  me/'  he  can  say,  "there  would 
have  been  a  Job  about  those  diagrams,  and  that  sub- 
ject or  this  would  have  been  less  ably  taught."  .  .  . 

The  fact  remains  that  for  him  the  rewards  have 
been  adequate,  if  not  to  content  at  any  rate  to  keep 
him  working.  Of  course  he  covets  the  notice  of  the 
world  he  has  served,  as  a  lover  covets  the  notice  of  his 
mistress.  Of  course  he  thinks  somewhere,  somewhen, 


ADOLESCENCE  131 

he  will  get  credit.  Only  last  year  I  heard  some  men 
talking  of  him,  and  they  were  noting,  with  little  mean 
smiles,  how  he  had  shown  himself  self-conscious  while 
there  was  talk  of  some  honorary  degree-giving  or  other ; 
it  would,  I  have  no  doubt,  please  him  greatly  if  his 
work  were  to  flower  into  a  crimson  gown  in  some  Aca- 
demic parterre.  Why  shouldn't  it?  But  that  is  inci- 
dental vanity  at  the  worst;  he  goes  on  anyhow.  Most 
men  don't. 

But  we  had  our  walk  twenty  years  and  more  ago 
now.  He  was  oldish  even  then  as  a  young  man,  just 
as  he  is  oldish  still  in  middle  age.  Long  may  his  in- 
dustrious elderliness  flourish  for  the  good  of  the  world ! 
He  lectured  a  little  in  conversation  then;  he  lectures 
more  now  and  listens  less,  toilsomely  disentangling 
what  you  already  understand,  giving  you  in  detail  the 
data  you  know;  these  are  things  like  callosities  that 
come  from  a  man's  work. 

Our  long  three  weeks'  talk  comes  back  to  me  as  a 
memory  of  ideas  and  determinations  slowly  growing, 
all  mixed  up  with  a  smell  of  wood  smoke  and  pine 
woods  and  huge  precipices  and  remote  gleams  of  snow- 
fields  and  the  sound  of  cascading  torrents  rushing 
through  deep  gorges  far  below.  It  is  mixed,  too,  with 
gossips  with  waitresses  and  fellow  travellers,  with  my 
first  essays  in  colloquial  German  and  Italian,  with  dis- 
putes about  the  way  to  take,  and  other  things  that  I 
will  tell  of  in  another  section.  But  the  white  passion 
of  human  service  was  our  dominant  theme.  Not  simply 
perhaps  nor  altogether  unselfishly,  but  quite  honestly, 
and  with  at  least  a  frequent  self-forgetfulness,  did  we 
want  to  do  fine  and  noble  things,  to  help  in  their  de- 
veloping, to  lessen  misery,  to  broaden  and  exalt  life. 
It  is  very  hard — perhaps  it  is  impossible — to  present  in 
a  page  or  two  the  substance  and  quality  of  nearly  a 
month's  conversation,  conversation  that  is  casual  and 


132      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

discursive  in  form,  that  ranges  carelessly  from  triviality 
to  immensity,  and  yet  is  constantly  resuming  a  con- 
structive process,  as  workmen  on  a  wall  loiter  and  jest 
and  go  and  come  back,  and  all  the  while  build. 

We  got  it  more  and  more  definite  that  the  core  of 
our  purpose  beneath  all  its  varied  aspects  must  needs 
be  order  and  discipline.  "  Muddle,"  said  I,  "  is  the 
enemy."  That  remains  my  belief  to  this  day.  Clear- 
ness and  order,  light  and  foresight,  these  things  I  know 
for  Good.  It  was  muddle  had  just  given  us  all  the 
still  freshly  painful  disasters  and  humiliations  of  the 
war,  muddle  that  gives  us  the  visibly  sprawling  dis- 
order of  our  cities  and  industrial  country-side,  muddle 
that  gives  us  the  waste  of  life,  the  limitations,  wretch- 
edness and  unemployment  of  the  poor.  Muddle!  I  re- 
member myself  quoting  Kipling — 

"All  along  o*  dirtiness,  all  along  o*  mess, 
All  along  o'  doin'  things  rather-more-or-less.n 

"  We  build  the  state,"  we  said  over  and  over  again. 
"  That  is  what  we  are  for — servants  of  the  new  re- 
organisation ! " 

We  planned  half  in  earnest  and  half  Utopianising, 
a  League  of  Social  Service. 

We  talked  of  the  splendid  world  of  men  that  might 
grow  out  of  such  unpaid  and  ill-paid  work  as  we  were 
setting  our  faces  to  do.  We  spoke  of  the  intricate 
difficulties,  the  monstrous  passive  resistances,  the  hos- 
tilities to  such  a  development  as  we  conceived  our  work 
subserved,  and  we  spoke  with  that  underlying  confidence 
in  the  invincibility  of  the  causes  we  adopted  that  is 
natural  to  young  and  scarcely  tried  men. 

We  talked  much  of  the  detailed  life  of  politics  so 
far  as  it  was  known  to  us,  and  there  Willersley  was 
more  experienced  and  far  better  informed  than  I;  we 


ADOLESCENCE  133 

discussed  possible  combinations  and  possible  develop- 
ments, and  the  chances  of  some  great  constrnctive 
movement  coming  from  the  heart-searchings  the  Boer 
war  had  occasioned.  We  would  sink  to  gossip — even 
at  the  Suetonius  level.  Willersley  would  decline  to- 
wards illuminating  anecdotes  that  I  capped  more  or 
less  loosely  from  my  private  reading.  We  were  par- 
ticularly wise,  I  remember,  upon  the  management  of 
newspapers,  because  about  that  we  knew  nothing  what- 
ever. We  perceived  that  great  things  were  to  be  done 
through  newspapers.  We  talked  of  swaying  opinion 
and  moving  great  classes  to  massive  action. 

Men  are  egotistical  even  in  devotion.  All  our 
splendid  projects  were  thickset  with  the  first  personal 
pronoun.  We  both  could  write,  and  all  that  we  said 
in  general  terms  was  reflected  in  the  particular  in  our 
minds;  it  was  ourselves  we  saw,  and  no  others,  writing 
and  speaking  that  moving  word.  We  had  already  pro- 
duced manuscript  and  passed  the  initiations  of  proof 
reading;  I  had  been  a  frequent  speaker  in  the  Union, 
and  Willersley  was  an  active  man  on  the  School  Board, 
Our  feet  were  already  on  the  lower  rungs  that  led  up 
and  up.  He  was  six  and  twenty,  and  I  twenty-two. 
We  intimated  our  individual  careers  in  terms  of  bold 
expectation.  I  had  prophetic  glimpses  of  walls  and 
hoardings  clamorous  with  "  Vote  for  Remington,"  and 
Willersley  no  doubt  saw  himself  chairman  of  this  com- 
mittee and  that,  saying  a  few  slightly  ironical  words 
after  the  declaration  of  the  poll,  and  then  sitting 
friendly  beside  me  on  the  government  benches.  There 
Yras  nothing  impossible  in  such  dreams.  Why  not  the 
Board  of  Education  for  him?  My  preference  at  that 
time  wavered  between  the  Local  Government  Board — I 
had  great  ideas  about  town-planning,  about  revisions 
of  municipal  areas  and  re-organised  internal  transit — • 
and  the  War  Office.  I  swayed  strongly  towards  the 


134      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

latter  as  the  journey  progressed.  My  educational  bias 
came  later. 

The  swelling  ambitions  that  have  tramped  over 
Alpine  passes!  How  many  of  them,  like  mine,  have 
come  almost  within  sight  of  realisation  before  they 
failed? 

There  were  times  when  we  posed  like  young  goas 
(of  unassuming  exterior),  and  times  when  we  were  full 
of  the  absurdest  little  solicitudes  about  our  prospects. 
There  were  times  when  one  surveyed  the  whole  world 
of  men  as  if  it  was  a  little  thing  at  one's  feet,  and  by 
way  of  contrast  I  remember  once  lying  in  bed — it  must 
have  been  during  this  holiday,  though  I  cannot  for  the 
life  of  me  fix  where — and  speculating  whether  perhaps 
some  day  I  might  not  be  a  K.  C.  B.,  Sir  Richard  Rem- 
ington, K.  C.  B.,  M.  P. 

But  the  big  style  prevailed.   .  .  . 

We  could  not  tell  from  minute  to  minute  whether 
we  were  planning  for  a  world  of  solid  reality,  or  telling 
ourselves  fairy  tales  about  this  prospect  of  life.  So 
much  seemed  possible,  and  everything  we  could  think 
of  so  improbable.  There  were  lapses  when  it  seemed 
to  me  I  could  never  be  anything  but  just  the  entirely 
unimportant  and  undistinguished  young  man  I  was  for 
ever  and  ever.  I  couldn't  even  think  of  myself  as  five 
and  thirty. 

Once  I  remember  Willersley  going  over  a  list  of 
failures,  and  why  they  had  failed — but  young  men  in 
the  twenties  do  not  know  much  about  failures. 

§   10 

Willersley  and  I  professed  ourselves  Socialists,  but 
by  this  time  I  knew  my  Rodbertus  as  well  as  my  Marx, 
and  there  was  much  in  our  socialism  that  would  have 
shocked  Chris  Robinson  as  much  as  anything  in  life 
could  have  shocked  him.  Socialism  as  a  simple  demo- 


ADOLESCENCE  135 

cratic  cry  we  had  done  with  for  ever.  We  were  soci- 
alists because  Individualism  for  us  meant  muddle, 
meant  a  crowd  of  separated,  undisciplined  little  peo- 
ple all  obstinately  and  ignorantly  doing  things  jar- 
ringly, each  one  in  his  own  way.  "Each/'  I  said, 
quoting  words  of  my  father's  that  rose  apt  in  my  mem- 
ory, "  snarling  from  his  own  little  bit  of  property,  like 
a  dog  tied  to  a  cart's  tail." 

"Essentially,"  said  Willersley,  "essentially  we're 
for  conscription,  in  peace  and  war  alike.  The  man 
who  owns  property  is  a  public  official  and  has  to  be- 
have as  such.  That's  the  gist  of  socialism  as  I  under- 
stand it." 

"  Or  be  dismissed  from  his  post,"  I  said,  "  and  re- 
placed by  some  better  sort  of  official.  A  man's  none 
the  less  an  official  because  he's  irresponsible.  What 
he  does  with  his  property  affects  people  just  the  same. 
Private !  No  one  is  really  private  but  an  outlaw.  .  .  ." 

Order  and  devotion  were  the  very  essence  of  our 
socialism,  and  a  splendid  collective  vigour  and  hap- 
piness its  end.  We  projected  an  ideal  state,  an  organ- 
ised state  as  confident  and  powerful  as  modern  science, 
as  balanced  and  beautiful  as  a  body,  as  beneficent  as 
sunshine,  the  organised  state  that  should  end  muddle 
for  ever;  it  ruled  all  our  ideals  and  gave  form  to  all 
our  ambitions. 

Every  man  was  to  be  definitely  related  to  that,  to 
have  his  predominant  duty  to  that.  Such  was  the  Eng- 
land renewed  we  had  in  mind,  and  how  to  serve  that 
end,  to  subdue  undisciplined  worker  and  undisciplined 
wealth  to  it,  and  make  the  Scientific  Commonweal, 
King,  was  the  continuing  substance  of  our  intercourse. 

§  11 

Every  day  the  wine  of  the  mountains  was  stronger 
in  our  blood,  and  the  flush  of  our  youth  deeper.  We 
would  go  in  the  morning  sunlight  alon^c  some  narrow 


136      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

Alpine  mule-path  shouting  large  suggestions  for  na- 
tional re-organisation,  and  weighing  considerations  as 
lightly  as  though  the  world  was  wax  in  our  hands. 
"Great  England/'  we  said  in  effect,  over  and  over 
again,  "and  we  will  be  among  the  makers!  England 
renewed!  The  country  has  been  warned;  it  has  learnt 
its  lesson.  The  disasters  and  anxieties  of  the  war  have 
sunk  in.  England  has  become  serious.  ...  Oh!  there 
are  big  things  before  us  to  do ;  big  enduring  things ! " 

One  evening  we  walked  up  to  the  loggia  of  a  little 
pilgrimage  church,  I  forget  its  name,  that  stands  out 
on  a  conical  hill  at  the  head  of  a  winding  stair  above 
the  town  of  Locarno.  Down  below  the  houses  clustered 
amidst  a  confusion  of  heat-bitten  greenery.  I  had 
been  sitting  silently  on  the  parapet,  looking  across  to 
\:he  purple  mountain  masses  where  Switzerland  passes 
into  Italy,  and  the  drift  of  our  talk  seemed  suddenly 
to  gather  to  a  head. 

I  broke  into  speech,  giving  form  to  the  thoughts 
that  had  been  accumulating.  My  words  have  long  since 
passed  out  of  my  memory,  the  phrases  of  familiar  ex- 
pression have  altered  for  me,  but  the  substance  remains 
as  clear  as  ever.  I  said  how  we  were  in  our  measure 
emperors  and  kings,  men  undriven,  free  to  do  as  we 
pleased  with  life;  we  classed  among  the  happy  ones, 
our  bread  and  common  necessities  were  given  us  fop 
nothing,  we  had  abilities, — it  wasn't  modesty  but  cow- 
ardice to  behave  as  if  we  hadn't — and  Fortune  watched 
us  to  see  what  we  might  do  with  opportunity  and  the 
world- 

"  There  are  so  many  things  to  do,  you  see,"  began 
Willersley,  in  his  judicial  lecturer's  voice. 

"  So  many  things  we  may  do,"  I  interrupted, "  with 
all  these  years  before  us.  ...  We're  exceptional  men. 
It's  our  place,  our  duty,  to  do  things." 

"  Here  anyhow,"  I  said,  answering  the  faint  amuse- 


ADOLESCENCE  137 

ment  of  his  face;  "I've  got  no  modesty.  Everything 
conspires  to  set  me  up.  Why  should  I  run  about  like 
all  those  grubby  little  beasts  down  there,  seeking  noth- 
ing but  mean  little  vanities  and  indulgencies — and  then 
take  credit  for  modesty?  I  know  I  am  capable.  I 
know  I  have  imagination.  Modesty!  I  know  if  I 
don't  attempt  the  very  biggest  things  in  life  I  am  a 
damned  shirk.  The  very  biggest!  Somebody  has  to 
attempt  them.  I  feel  like  a  loaded  gun  that  is  only 
a  little  perplexed  because  it  has  to  find  out  just  where 
to  aim  itself.  .  .  ." 

The  lake  and  the  frontier  villages,  a  white  puff  of 
steam  on  the  distant  railway  to  Luino,  the  busy  boats 
and  steamers  trailing  triangular  wakes  of  foam,  the 
long  vista  eastward  towards  battlemented  Bellinzona, 
the  vast  mountain  distances,  now  tinged  with  sunset 
light,  behind  this  nearer  landscape,  and  the  southward 
waters  with  remote  coast  towns  shining  dimly,  waters 
that  merged  at  last  in  a  luminous  golden  haze,  made 
a  broad  panoramic  spectacle.  It  was  as  if  one  sur- 
veyed the  world, — and  it  was  like  the  games  I  used 
to  set  out  upon  my  nursery  floor.  I  was  exalted  by 
it;  I  felt  larger  than  men.  So  kings  should  feel. 

That  sense  of  largness  came  to  me  then,  and  it  has 
come  to  me  since,  again  and  again,  a  splendid  intima- 
tion or  a  splendid  vanity.  Once,  I  remember,  when 
I  looked  at  Genoa  from  the  mountain  crest  behind  the 
town  and  saw  that  multitudinous  place  in  all  its  beauty 
of  width  and  abundance  and  clustering  human  effort, 
and  once  as  I  was  steaming  past  the  brown  low  hills 
of  Staten  Island  towards  the  towering  vigour  and 
clamorous  vitality  of  New  York  City,  that  mood  rose 
to  its  quintessence.  And  once  it  came  to  me,  as  I  shall 
tell,  on  Dover  cliffs.  And  a  hundred  times  when  I 
have  thought  of  England  as  our  country  might  be, 
with  no  wretched  poor,  no  wretched  rich,  a  nation  armed 


138      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

and  ordered,  trained  and  purposeful  amidst  its  vales 
and  rivers,  that  emotion  of  collective  ends  and  collec- 
tive purposes  has  returned  to  me.  I  felt  as  great  as 
humanity.  For  .a  brief  moment  I  was  humanity,  look- 
ing at  the  world  I  had  made  and  had  still  to  make.  .  .  . 

§   12 

And  mingled  with  these  dreams  of  power  and  patri- 
otic service  there  was  another  series  of  a  different  qual- 
ity and  a  different  colour,  like  the  antagonistic  colour 
of  a  shot  silk.  The  white  life  and  the  red  life,  con- 
trasted and  interchanged,  passing  swiftly  at  a  turn 
from  one  to  another,  and  refusing  ever  to  mingle  peace- 
fully one  with  the  other.  I  was  asking  myself  openly 
and  distinctly:  what  are  you  going  to  do  for  the  world? 
What  are  you  going  to  do  with  yourself?  and  with  an 
increasing  strength  and  persistence  Nature  in  spite  of 
my  averted  attention  was  asking  me  in  penetrating 
undertones:  what  are  you  going  to  do  about  this  other 
fundamental  matter,  the  beauty  of  girls  and  women 
and  your  desire  for  them? 

I  have  told  of  my  sisterless  youth  and  the  narrow 
circumstances  of  my  upbringing.  It  made  all  women- 
kind  mysterious  to  me.  If  it  had  not  been  for  my 
Staffordshire  cousins  I  do  not  think  I  should  have 
known  any  girls  at  all  until  I  was  twenty.  Of  Staf- 
fordshire I  will  tell  a  little  later.  But  I  can  remem- 
ber still  how  through  all  those  ripening  years,  the 
thought  of  women's  beauty,  their  magic  presence  in  the 
world  beside  me  and  the  unknown,  untried  reactions  of 
their  intercourse,  grew  upon  me  and  grew,  as  a  strange 
presence  grows  in  a  room  when  one  is  occupied  by 
other  things.  I  busied  myself  and  pretended  to  be 
wholly  occupied,  and  there  the  woman  stood,  full  half 
of  life  neglected,  and  it  seemed  to  my  averted  mind 
sometimes  that  she  was  there  clad  and  dignified  and 


ADOLESCENCE  139 

divine,  and  sometimes  Aphrodite  shining  and  command- 
ing, and  sometimes  that  Venus  who  stoops  and  allures. 

This  travel  abroad  seemed  to  have  released  a  multi- 
tude of  things  in  my  mind;  the  clear  air,  the  beauty 
of  the  sunshine,  the  very  blue  of  the  glaciers  made 
me  feel  my  body  and  quickened  all  those  disregarded 
dreams.  I  saw  the  sheathed  beauty  of  women's  forms 
all  about  me,  in  the  cheerful  waitresses  at  the  inns, 
in  the  pedestrians  one  encountered  in  the  tracks,  in 
the  chance  fellow  travellers  at  the  hotel  tables.  "  Con- 
found it ! "  said  I,  and  talked  all  the  more  zealously 
of  that  greater  England  that  was  calling  us. 

I  remember  that,  we  passed  two  Germans,  an  old 
man  and  a  tall  fair  girl,  father  and  daughter,  who  were 
walking  down  from  Saas.  She  came  swinging  and 
shining  towards  us,  easy  and  strong.  I  worshipped  her 
as  she  approached. 

"  Gut  Tag ! "  said  Willersley,  removing  his  hat. 

"  Morgen !  "  said  the  old  man,  saluting. 

I  stared  stockishly  at  the  girl,  who  passed  with  an 
indifferent  face. 

That  sticks  in  my  mind  as  a  picture  remains  in  a 
room,  it  has  kept  there  bright  and  fresh  as  a  thing 
seen  yesterday,  for  twenty  years.  .  .  . 

I  flirted  hesitatingly  once  or  twice  with  comely 
serving  girls,  and  was  a  little  ashamed  lest  Willersley 
should  detect  the  keen  interest  I  took  in  them,  and 
then  as  we  came  over  the  pass  from  Santa  Maria 
Maggiore  to  Cannobio,  my  secret  preoccupation  took 
me  by  surprise  and  flooded  me  and  broke  down  my 
pretences. 

The  women  in  that  valley  are  very  beautiful — 
women  vary  from  valley  to  valley  in  the  Alps  and  are 
plain  and  squat  here  and  divinities  five  miles  away — 
and  as  we  came  down  we  passed  a  group  of  five  or  six 
^f  them  resting  by  the  wayside.  Their  burthens  were 


140      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

beside  them,  and  one  like  Ceres  held  a  reaping  hook 
in  her  brown  hand.  She  watched  us  approaching  and 
smiled  faintly,  her  eyes  at  mine. 

There  was  some  greeting,  and  two  of  them  laughed 
together. 

We  passed. 

"  Glorious  girls  they  were,"  said  Willersley,  and 
suddenly  an  immense  sense  of  boredom  enveloped  me. 
I  saw  myself  striding  on  down  that  winding  road,  talk- 
ing of  politics  and  parties  and  bills  of  parliament  and 
all  sorts  of  dessicated  things.  That  road  seemed  to  me 
to  wind  on  for  ever  down  to  dust  and  infinite  dreari- 
ness. I  knew  it  for  a  way  of  death.  Reality  was  be- 
hind us. 

Willersley  set  himself  to  draw  a  sociological  moral. 
"  I'm  not  so  sure,"  he  said  in  a  voice  of  intense  dis- 
criminations, "  after  all,  that  agricultural  work  isn't 
good  for  women." 

"  Damn  agricultural  work  !  "  I  said,  and  broke  out 
into  a  vigorous  cursing  of  all  I  held  dear.  "  Fettered 
things  we  are  !  "  I  cried.  "  I  wonder  why  I  stand  it  !  " 

"Stand  what?" 

"Why  don't  I  go  back  and  make  love  to  those  girls 
and  let  the  world  and  you  and  everything  go  nang? 
Deep  breasts  and  rounded  limbs  —  and  we  poor  emas- 
culated devils  go  tramping  by  with  the  blood  of  youth 
in  us  !  .  .  ." 

"  I'm  not  quite  sure,  Remington,"  said  Willersley, 
looking  at  me  with  a  deliberately  quaint  expression 
over  his  glasses,  "  that  picturesque  scenery  is  altogether 
good  for  your  morals." 

That  fever  was  still  in  my  blood  when  we  came  to 
Locarno. 


Along  the   hot   and   dusty   lower   road   between  tl 


ADOLESCENCE  141 

Orrido  of  Traffiume  and  Cannobio  Willersley  had 
developed  his  first  blister.  And  partly  because  of  that 
and  partly  because  there  was  a  bag  at  the  station  that 
gave  us  the  refreshment  of  clean  linen  and  partly  be- 
cause of  the  lazy  lower  air  into  which  we  had  come,  we 
decided  upon  three  or  four  days'  sojourn  in  the  Empress 
Hotel. 

We  dined  that  night  at  a  table-d'hote,  and  I 
found  myself  next  to  an  Englishwoman  who  began  a 
conversation  that  was  resumed  presently  in  the  hotel 
lounge.  She  was  a  woman  of  perhaps  thirty-three  or 
thirty-four,  slenderly  built,  with  a  warm  reddish  skin 
and  very  abundant  fair  golden  hair,  the  wife  of  a 
petulant-looking  heavy-faced  man  of  perhaps  fifty- 
three,  who  smoked  a  cigar  and  dozed  over  his  coffee 
and  presently  went  to  bed.  "  He  always  goes  to  bed 
like  that,"  she  confided  startlingly.  "  He  sleeps 
after  all  his  meals.  I  never  knew  such  a  man  to 
sleep." 

Then  she  returned  to  our  talk,  whatever  it  was. 

We  had  begun  at  the  dinner  table  with  itineraries 
and  the  usual  topographical  talk,  and  she  had  envied 
our  pedestrian  travel.  "  My  husband  doesn't  walk,"  she 
said.  "  His  heart  is  weak  and  he  cannot  manage  the 
hills." 

There  was  something  friendly  and  adventurous  in 
her  manner;  she  conveyed  she  liked  me,  and  when 
presently  Willersley  drifted  off  to  write  letters  our  talk 
sank  at  once  to  easy  confidential  undertones.  I  felt 
enterprising,  and  indeed  it  is  easy  to  be  daring  with 
people  one  has  never  seen  before  and  may  never  see 
again.  I  said  I  loved  beautiful  scenery  and  all  beauti- 
ful things,  and  the  pointing  note  in  my  voice  made  her 
laugh.  She  told  me  I  had  bold  eyes,  and  so  far  as  I 
can  remember  I  said  she  made  them  bold.  "  Blue  they 
are,"  she  remarked,  smiling  archly.  "  I  like  blue  eyes." 


142      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

Then  I  think  we  compared  ages,  and  she  said  she  was 
the  Woman  of  Thirty,  "  George  Moore's  Woman  of 
Thirty/' 

I  had  not  read  George  Moore  at  the  time,  but  I  pre- 
tended to  understand. 

That,  I  think,  was  our  limit  that  evening.  She  went 
to  bed,  smiling  good-night  quite  prettily  down  the  big 
staircase,  and  I  and  Willersley  went  out  to  smoke  in 
the  garden.  My  head  was  full  of  her,  and  I  found 
it  necessary  to  talk  about  her.  So  I  made  her  a  prob- 
lem in  sociology.  "  Who  the  deuce  are  these  people  ?  " 
I  said,  "  and  how  do  they  get  a  living  ?  They  seem  to 

have  plenty  of  money.  He  strikes  me  as  being 

Willersley,  what  is  a  drysalter?  I  think  he's  a  retired 
drysalter." 

Willersley  theorised  while  I  thought  of  the  woman 
and  that  provocative  quality  of  dash  she  had  displayed. 
The  next  day  at  lunch  she  and  I  met  like  old  friends. 
A  huge  mass  of  private  thinking  during  the  interval 
had  been  added  to  our  effect  upon  one  another.  We 
talked  for  a  time  of  insignificant  things. 

"  What  do  you  do,"  she  asked  rather  quickly,  "  after 
lunch  ?  Take  a  siesta  ?  " 

"  Sometimes/'  I  said,  and  hung  for  a  moment  eye 
to  eye. 

We  hadn't  a  doubt  of  each  other,  but  my  heart  was 
Seating  like  a  steamer  propeller  when  it  lifts  out  of  the 
water. 

"  Do  you  get  a  view  from  your  room  ?  "  she  asked 
after  a  pause. 

"  It's  on  the  third  floor,  Number  seventeen,  near  the 
staircase.  My  friend's  next  door." 

She  began  to  talk  of  books.  She  was  interested  in 
Christian  Science,  she  said,  and  spoke  of  a  book.  I 
forget  altogether  what  that  book  was  called,  though  I 
remember  to  this  day  with  the  utmost  exactness  the 


ADOLESCENCE  143 

purplish  magenta  of  its  cover.  She  said  she  would  lend 
it  to  me  and  hesitated. 

Willersley  wanted  to  go  for  an  expedition  across  the 
lake  that  afternoon,  but  I  refused.  He  made  some 
other  proposals  that  I  rejected  abruptly.  "  I  shall 
write  in  my  room/'  I  said. 

"  Why  not  write  down  here  ?  " 

"  I  shall  write  in  my  room,"  I  snarled  like  a  thwarted 
animal,  and  he  looked  at  me  curiously.  "  Very  well," 
he  said;  "then  I'll  make  some  notes  and  think  about 
that  order  of  ours  out  under  the  magnolias." 

I  hovered  about  the  lounge  for  a  time  buying  post- 
cards and  feverishly  restless,  watching  the  movements 
of  the  other  people.  Finally  I  went  up  to  my  room 
and  sat  down  by  the  windows,  staring  out.  There  came 
a  little  tap  at  the  unlocked  door  and  in  an  instant, 
like  the  go  of  a  taut  bowstring,  I  was  up  and  had  it 
open. 

"  Here  is  that  book,"  she  said,  and  we  hesitated. 

"  Come  in! "  I  whispered,  trembling  from  head  to 
foot. 

"  You're  just  a  boy,"  she  said  in  a  low  tone. 

I  did  not  feel  a  bit  like  a  lover,  I  felt  like  a  burglar 
with  the  safe-door  nearly  opened.  "Come  in,"  I  said 
almost  impatiently,  for  anyone  might  be  in  the  passage, 
and  I  gripped  her  wrist  and  drew  her  towards  me. 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?  "  she  answered  with  a  faint 
smile  on  her  lips,  and  awkward  and  yielding. 

I  shut  the  door  behind  her,  still  holding  her  with 
one  hand,  then  turned  upon  her — she  was  laughing 
nervously — and  without  a  word  drew  her  to  me  and 
kissed  her.  And  I  remember  that  as  I  kissed  her  she 
made  a  little  noise  almost  like  the  purring  miaow  with 
which  a  cat  will  greet  one  and  her  face,  close  to  mine, 
became  solemn  and  tendei 

She  was  suddenly  a  different  being  from  the  discon- 


144      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

tented  wife  who  had  tapped  a  moment  since  on  my 
door,  a  woman  transfigured.  .  .  . 

That  evening  I  came  down  to  dinner  a  monster  of 
pride,  for  behold !  I  was  a  man.  I  felt  myself  the  most 
wonderful  and  unprecedented  of  adventurers.  It  was 
hard  to  believe  that  any  one  in  the  world  before  had 
done  as  much.  My  mistress  and  I  met  smiling,  we 
carried  things  off  admirably,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that 
Willersley  was  the  dullest  old  dog  in  the  world.  I 
wanted  to  give  him  advice.  I  wanted  to  give  him 
derisive  pokes.  After  dinner  and  coffee  in  the  lounge  I 
was  too  excited  and  hilarious  to  go  to  bed,  I  made  him 
come  with  me  down  to  the  cafe  under  the  arches  by  the 
pier,  and  there  drank  beer  and  talked  extravagant  non- 
sense about  everything  under  the  sun,  in  order  not  to 
talk  about  the  happenings  of  the  afternoon.  All  the 
time  something  shouted  within  me :  "  I  am  a  man !  I 
am  a  man !  "  .  .  . 

"  What  shall  we  do  to-morrow  ?  "  said  he. 

"  I'm  for  loafing/'  I  said.  "  Let's  row  in  the  morn- 
ing and  spend  to-morrow  afternoon  just  as  we  did  to- 
day." 

"  They  say  the  church  behind  the  town  is  worth 
seeing." 

"We'll  go  up  about  sunset;  that's  the  best  time  for 
it.  We  can  start  about  five." 

We  heard  music,  and  went  further  alon^  the  arcade 
to  discover  a  place  where  girls  in  operatic  Swiss  peasant 
costume  were  singing  and  dancing  on  a  creaking,  pro- 
testing little  stage.  I  eyed  their  generous  display  of 
pink  neck  and  arm  with  the  seasoned  eye  of  a  man  who 
has  lived  in  the  world.  Life  was  perfectly  simple  and 
easy,  I  felt,  if  one  took  it  the  right  way. 

Next  day  Willersley  wanted  to  go  on,  but  I  delayed. 
Altogether  I  kept  him  back  four  days.  Then  abruptly 
my  mood  changed,  and  we  decided  to  start  early  the 


ADOLESCENCE  145 

following  morning.  I  remember,  though  a  little  indis- 
tinctly, the  feeling  of  my  last  talk  with  that  woman 
whose  surname,  odd  as  it  may  seem,  either  I  never  learnt 
or  I  have  forgotten.  (Her  Christian  name  was  Milly.) 
She  was  tired  and  rather  low-spirited,  and  disposed  to  be 
sentimental,  and  for  the  first  time  in  our  intercourse  I 
found  myself  liking  her  for  the  sake  of  her  own  person- 
ality. There  was  something  kindly  and  generous 
appearing  behind  the  veil  of  naive  and  uncontrolled 
sensuality  she  had  worn.  There  was  a  curious  quality 
of  motherliness  in  her  attitude  to  me  that  something 
in  my  nature  answered  and  approved.  She  didn't  pre- 
tend to  keep  it  up  that  she  had  yielded  to  my  initiative. 
"  I've  done  you  no  harm,"  she  said  a  little  doubtfully 
an  odd  note  for  a  man's  victim !  And,  "  we've  had  a 
good  time.  You  have  liked  me,  haven't  you  ?  " 

She  interested  me  in  her  lonely  dissatisfied  life;  she 
was  childless  and  had  no  hope  of  children,  and  her 
husband  was  the  only  son  of  a  rich  meat  salesman,  very 
mean,  a  mighty  smoker — "  he  reeks  of  it,"  she  said, 
"  always  " — and  interested  in  nothing  but  golf,  billiards 
(which  he  played  very  badly),  pigeon  shooting,  con- 
vivial Free  Masonry  and  Stock  Exchange  punting, 
Mostly  they  drifted  about  the  Riviera.  Her  mother 
had  contrived  her  marriage  when  she  was  eighteen. 
They  were  the  first  samples  I  ever  encountered  of  the 
great  multitude  of  functionless  property  owners  which 
encumbers  modern  civilisation — but  at  the  time  I  didn't 
think  much  of  that  aspect  of  them.  .  .  . 

I  tell  all  this  business  as  it  happened  without  com- 
ment, because  I  have  no  comment  to  make.  It  was  all 
strange  to  me,  strange  rather  than  wonderful,  and,  it 
may  be,  some  dream  of  beauty  died  for  ever  in  those 
furtive  meetings;  it  happened  to  me,  and  I  could 
scarcely  have  been  more  irresponsible  in  the  matter  or 
controlled  events  less  if  I  had  been  suddenly  pushed 


146      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

over  a  cliff  into  water.  I  swam,  of  course — finding 
myself  in  it.  Things  tested  me,  and  I  reacted,  as  I 
have  told.  The  bloom  of  my  innocence,  if  ever  there 
had  been  such  a  thing,  was  gone.  And  here  is  the 
remarkable  thing  about  it;  at  the  time  and  for  some 
days  I  was  over-weeningly  proud;  I  have  never  been  so 
proud  before  or  since;  I  felt  I  had  been  promoted  to 
virility;  I  was  unable  to  conceal  my  exultation  from 
Willersley.  It  was  a  mood  of  shining  shameless  un- 
gracious self-approval.  As  he  and  I  went  along  in  the 
cool  morning  sunshine  by  the  rice  fields  in  the  throat 
of  the  Val  Maggia  a  silence  fell  between  us. 

"  You  know  ?  "  I  said  abruptly, — "  about  that 
woman  ?  " 

Willersley  did  not  answer  for  a  moment.  He  looked 
at  me  over  the  corner  of  his  spectacles. 

"  Things  went  pretty  far  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  Oh !  all  the  way !  "  and  I  had  a  twinge  of  fatuous 
pride  in  my  unpremeditated  achievement. 

"  She  came  to  your  room  ?  " 

I  nodded. 

"  I  heard  her.  I  heard  her  whispering.  .  .  .  The 
whispering  and  rustling  and  so  on.  I  was  in  my  room 
yesterday.  .  .  .  Any  one  might  have  heard  you.  .  .  ." 

I  went  on  with  my  head  in  the  air. 

"  You  might  have  been  caught,  and  that  would  have 
meant  endless  trouble.  You  might  have  incurred  all 
sorts  of  consequences.  What  did  you  know  about 
her?  .  .  .  We  have  wasted  four  days  in  that  hot  close 
place.  When  we  found  that  League  of  Social  Service 
we  were  talking  about,"  he  said  with  a  determined  eye 
upon  me,  "  chastity  will  be  first  among  the  virtues  pre- 
scribed." 

"  I  shall  form  a  rival  league,"  I  said  a  little  damped. 
"  I'm  hanged  if  I  give  up  a  single  desire  in  me  until  I 
know  why." 


ADOLESCENCE  147 

He  lifted  his  chin  and  stared  before  him  through 
his  glasses  at  nothing.  "  There  are  some  things,"  he 
said,  "  that  a  man  who  means  to  work — to  do  great 
public  services — must  turn  his  back  upon.  I'm  not 
discussing  the  rights  or  wrongs  of  this  sort  of  thing. 
It  happens  to  be  the  conditions  we  work  under.  It 
will  probably  always  be  so.  If  you  want  to  experiment 
in  that  way,  if  you  want  even  to  discuss  it, — out  you 
go  from  political  life.  You  must  know  that's  so.  ... 
You're  a  strange  man,  Remington,  with  a  kind  of  kink 
in  you.  You've  a  sort  of  force.  You  might  happen  to 
do  immense  things.  .  .  .  Only " 

He  stopped.  He  had  said  all  that  he  had  forced 
himself  to  say. 

"  I  mean  to  take  myself  as  I  am/'  I  said.  "  I'm 
going  to  get  experience  for  humanity  out  of  all  my 
talents — and  bury  nothing." 

Willersley  twisted  his  face  to  its  humorous  expres- 
sion. "  I  doubt  if  sexual  proclivities,"  he  said  drily, 
"  come  within  the  scope  of  the  parable." 

I  let  that  go  for  a  little  while.  Then  I  broke  out. 
"  Sex !  "  said  I,  "  is  a  fundamental  thing  in  life.  We 
went  through  all  this  at  Trinity.  I'm  going  to  look  at 
it,  experience  it,  think  about  it — and  get  it  square  with 
the  rest  of  life.  Career  and  Politics  must  take  their 
chances  of  that.  It's  part  of  the  general  English  slack- 
ness that  they  won't  look  this  in  the  face.  Gods !  what 
a  muffled  time  we're  coming  out  of!  Sex  means  breed- 
ing, and  breeding  is  a  necessary  function  in  a  nation. 
The  Romans  broke  up  upon  that.  The  Americans  fade 
out  amidst  their  successes.  Eugenics " 

"  That  wasn't  Eugenics,"  said  Willersley. 

"  It  was  a  woman,"  I  said  after  a  little  interval,  feel- 
ing oddly  that  I  had  failed  altogether  to  answer  him, 
and  yet  had  a  strong  dumb  case  against  him. 


BOOK   THE    SECOND 
MARGARET 


CHAPTER   THE   FIRST 

MARGARET    IN    STAFFORDSHIRE 

I,, 
IUST  go  back  a  little  way  with  my  story.  In  the 
vious  book  I  have  described  the  kind  of  education 
that  happens  to  a  man  of  my  class  nowadays,  and  it 
has  been  convenient  to  leap  a  phase  in  my  experience 
that  I  must  now  set  out  at  length.  I  want  to  tell  in 
this  second  book  how  I  came  to  marry,  and  to  do  that 
I  must  give  something  of  the  atmosphere  in  which  I 
first  met  my  wife  and  some  intimations  of  the  forces 
that  went  to  her  making.  I  met  her  in  Staffordshire 
while  I  was  staying  with  that  uncle  of  whom  I  have 
already  spoken,  the  uncle  who  sold  my  father's  houses 
and  settled  my  mother  in  Penge.  Margaret  was  twenty 
then  and  I  was  twenty-two. 

It  was  just  before  the  walking  tour  in  Switzerland 
that  opened  up  so  much  of  the  world  to  me.  I  saw 
her  once,  for  an  afternoon,  and  circumstances  so  threw 
her  up  in  relief  that  I  formed  a  very  vivid  memory  of 
her.  She  was  in  the  sharpest  contrast  with  the  indus- 
trial world  about  her;  she  impressed  me  as  a  dainty 
blue  flower  might  do,  come  upon  suddenly  on  a  clinker 
heap.  She  remained  in  my  mind  at  once  a  perplexing 
interrogation  and  a  symbol.  .  .  . 

But  first  I  must  tell  of  my  Staffordshire  cousins  and 
the  world  that  served  as  a  foil  for  her. 

§  2 

I  first  went  to  stay  with  my  cousins  when  I  was  an 
151 


152      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

awkward  youth  of  sixteen,  wearing  deep  mourning  for 
my  mother.  My  uncle  wanted  to  talk  things  over  with 
me,  he  said,  and  if  he  could,  to  persuade  me  to  go 
into  business  instead  of  going  up  to  Cambridge. 

I  remember  that  visit  on  account  of  all  sorts  of 
novel  things,  but  chiefly,  I  think,  because  it  was  the 
first  time  I  encountered  anything  that  deserves  to  be 
spoken  of  as  wealth.  For  the  first  time  in  my  life  I 
had  to  do  with  people  who  seemed  to  have  endless  sup- 
plies of  money,  unlimited  good  clothes,  numerous  serv- 
ants; whose  daily  life  was  made  up  of  things  that 
I  had  hitherto  considered  to  be  treats  or  exceptional 
extravagances.  My  cousins  of  eighteen  and  nineteen 
took  cabs,  for  instance,  with  the  utmost  freedom,  and 
travelled  first-class  in  the  local  trains  that  run  up  and 
down  the  district  of  the  Five  Towns  with  an  entire 
unconsciousness  of  the  magnificence,  as  it  seemed  to 
me,  of  such  a  proceeding. 

The  family  occupied  a  large  villa  in  Newcastle,  with 
big  lawns  before  it  and  behind,  a  shrubbery  with  quite 
a  lot  of  shrubs,  a  coach  house  and  stable,  and  subordi- 
nate dwelling-places  for  the  gardener  and  the  coach- 
man Every  bedroom  contained  a  gas  heater  and  a 
canopied  brass  bedstead,  and  had  a  little  bathroom  at- 
tached equipped  with  the  porcelain  baths  and  fittings 
my  uncle  manufactured,  bright  and  sanitary  and 
stamped  with  his  name,  and  the  house  was  furnished 
throughout  with  chairs  and  tables  in  bright  shining 
wood,  soft  and  prevalently  red  Turkish  carpets,  cosy 
corners,  curtained  archways,  gold-framed  landscapes, 
overmantels,  a  dining-room  sideboard  like  a  palace, 
with  a  large  Tantalus,  and  electric  light  fittings  of  a 
gay  and  expensive  quality.  There  was  a  fine  billiard- 
room  on  the  ground  floor  with  three  comfortable  sofas 
and  a  rotating  bookcase  containing  an  excellent  collec- 
tion of  the  English  and  American  humorists  from 


IN    STAFFORDSHIRE          153 

Three  Men  in  a  Boat  to  the  penultimate  Mark  Twain. 
There  was  also  a  conservatory  opening  out  of  the 
dining-room,  to  which  the  gardener  brought  potted 
flowers  in  their  season.  .  .  . 

My  aunt  was  a  little  woman  with  a  scared  look  and 
a  cap  that  would  get  over  one  eye,  not  very  like  my 
mother,  and  nearly  eight  years  her  junior;  she  was 
very  much  concerned  with  keeping  everything  nice3 
and  unmercifully  bullied  by  my  two  cousins,  who  took 
after  their  father  and  followed  the  imaginations  of  their 
own  hearts.  They  were  tall,  dark,  warmly  flushed  girls, 
handsome  rather  than  pretty.  Gertrude,  the  eldest  and 
tallest,  had  eyes  that  were  almost  black;  Sibyl  was 
of  a  stouter  build,  and  her  eyes,  of  which  she  was 
shamelessly  proud,  were  dark  blue.  Sibyl's  hair  waved, 
and  Gertrude's  was  severely  straight.  They  treated 
me  on  my  first  visit  with  all  the  contempt  of  the 
adolescent  girl  for  a  boy  a  little  younger  and  infinitely 
less  expert  in  the  business  of  life  than  herself.  They 
were  very  busy  with  the  writings  of  notes  and  certain 
mysterious  goings  and  comings  of  their  own,  and  left 
me  very  much  to  my  own  devices.  Their  speech  in  my 
presence  was  full  of  unfathomable  allusions.  They 
were  the  sort  of  girls  who  will  talk  over  and  through 
an  uninitiated  stranger  with  the  pleasantest  sense  of 
superiority. 

I  met  them  at  breakfast  and  at  lunch  and  at  the 
half-past  six  o'clock  high  tea  that  formed  the  third 
chief  meal  of  the  day.  I  heard  them  rattling  off  the 
compositions  of  Chaminade  and  Moskowski,  with  great 
decision  and  effect,  and  hovered  on  the  edge  of  tennis 
foursomes  where  it  was  manifest  to  the  dullest  intelli- 
gence that  my  presence  was  unnecessary.  Then  I 
went  off  to  find  some  readable  book  in  the  place,  but 
apart  from  miscellaneous  popular  novels,  some  veteri- 
nary works,  a  number  of  comic  books,  old  bound  volumes 


154      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

of  The  Illustrated  London  News  and  a  large,  popular 
illustrated  History  of  England,  there  was  very  little  to 
be  found.  My  aunt  talked  to  me  in  a  casual  feeble 
way,  cbiefly  about  my  mother's  last  illness.  The  two 
had  seen  very  little  of  each  other  for  many  years;  she 
made  no  secret  of  it  that  the  ineligible  qualities  of  my 
father  were  the  cause  of  the  estrangement.  The  only 
other  society  in  the  house  during  the  day  was  an  old 
and  rather  decayed  Skye  terrier  in  constant  conflict 
with  what  were  no  doubt  imaginary  fleas.  I  took 
myself  off  for  a  series  of  walks,  and  acquired  a  consid- 
erable knowledge  of  the  scenery  and  topography  of  the 
Potteries. 

It  puzzled  my  aunt  that  I  did  not  go  westward, 
where  it  was  country-side  and  often  quite  pretty,  with 
hedgerows  and  fields  and  copses  and  flowers.  But 
always  I  went  eastward,  where  in  a  long  valley  indus- 
trialism smokes  and  sprawls.  That  was  the  stuff  to 
which  I  turned  by  nature,  to  the  human  effort,  and  the 
accumulation  and  jar  of  men's  activities.  And  in  such 
a  country  as  that  valley  social  and  economic  relations 
were  simple  and  manifest.  Instead  of  the  limitless 
confusion  of  London's  population,  in  which  no  man  can 
trace  any  but  the  most  slender  correlation  between  rich 
and  poor,  in  which  everyone  seems  disconnected  and 
adrift  from  everyone,  you  can  see  here  the  works,  the 
potbank  or  the  ironworks  or  what  not,  and  here  close 
at  hand  the  congested,  meanly-housed  workers,  and  at  a 
little  distance  a  small  middle-class  quarter,  and  again 
remoter,  the  big  house  of  the  employer.  It  was  like  a 
very  simplified  diagram — after  the  untraceable  confu- 
sion of  London. 

I  prowled  alone,  curious  and  interested,  through 
shabby  back  streets  of  mean  little  homes;  I  followed 
canals,  sometimes  canals  of  mysteriously  heated  waters 
with  ghostly  wisps  of  steam  rising  against  blackened 


IN   STAFFORDSHIRE         155 


walls  or  a  distant  prospect  of  dustbin-fed  vegetable 
gardens,  I  saw  the  women  pouring  out  from  the  pot- 
banks,  heard  the  hooters  summoning  the  toilers  to  work, 
lost  my  way  upon  slag  heaps  as  big  as  the  hills  of  the 
south  country,  dodged  trains  at  manifestly  dangerous 
level  crossings,  and  surveyed  across  dark  intervening 
spaces,  the  flaming  uproar,  the  gnome-like  activities  of 
iron  foundries.  I  heard  talk  of  strikes  and  rumours  of 
strikes,  and  learnt  from  the  columns  of  some  obscure 
labour  paper  I  bought  one  day,  of  the  horrors  of  the 
lead  poisoning  that  was  in  those  days  one  of  the  normal 
risks  of  certain  sorts  of  pottery  workers.  Then  back  I 
came,  by  the  ugly  groaning  and  clanging  steam  tram  of 
that  period,  to  my  uncle's  house  and  lavish  abundance 
of  money  and  more  or  less  furtive  flirtations  and  the 
tinkle  of  Moskowski  and  Chaminade.  It  was,  I  say, 
diagrammatic.  One  saw  the  expropriator  and  the 
expropriated — as  if  Marx  had  arranged  the  picture. 
It  was  as  jumbled  and  far  more  dingy  and  disastrous 
than  any  of  the  confusions  of  building  and  development 
that  had  surrounded  my  youth  at  Bromstead  and  Penge, 
but  it  had  a  novel  quality  of  being  explicable.  I  found 
great  virtue  in  the  word  "  exploitation." 

There  stuck  in  my  mind  as  if  it  was  symbolical  of 
the  whole  thing  the  twisted  figure  of  a  man,  whose  face 
had  been  horribly  scalded — I  can't  describe  how,  except 
that  one  eye  was  just  expressionless  white — and  he 
ground  at  an  organ  bearing  a  card  which  told  in  weak 
and  bitterly  satirical  phrasing  that  he  had  been  scalded 
by  the  hot  water  from  the  tuyeres  of  the  blast  furnace 
of  Lord  Pandram's  works.  He  had  been  scalded  and 
quite  inadequately  compensated  and  dismissed.  And 
Lord  Pandram  was  worth  half  a  million. 

That  upturned  sightless  white  eye  of  his  took  pos- 
session of  my  imagination.  I  don't  think  that  even 
then  I  was  swayed  by  any  crude  melodramatic  con- 


156      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

ception  of  injustice.  I  was  quite  prepared  to  believe 
the  card  wasn't  a  punctiliously  accurate  statement  of 
fact,  and  that  a  case  could  be  made  out  for  Lord 
Pandram.  Still  there  in  the  muddy  gutter,  painfully 
and  dreadfully,  was  the  man,  and  he  was  smashed  and 
scalded  and  wretched,  and  he  ground  his  dismal  hurdy- 
gurdy  with  a  weary  arm,  calling  upon  Heaven  and  the 
passer-by  for  help,  for  help  and  some  sort  of  righting — 
one  could  not  imagine  quite  what.  There  he  was  as  a 
fact,  as  a  by-product  of  the  system  that  heaped  my 
cousins  with  trinkets  and  provided  the  comic  novels 
and  the  abundant  cigars  and  spacious  billiard-room  of 
my  uncle's  house.  I  couldn't  disconnect  him  and  them. 
My  uncle  on  his  part  did  nothing  to  conceal  the  state 
of  war  that  existed  between  himself  and  his  workers, 
and  the  mingled  contempt  and  animosity  he  felt  from 
them. 

§   8 

Prosperity  had  overtaken  my  uncle.  So  quite 
naturally  he  believed  that  every  man  who  was  not  as 
prosperous  as  he  was  had  only  himself  to  blame.  He 
was  rich  and  he  had  left  school  and  gone  into  his  fath- 
er's business  at  fifteen,  and  that  seemed  to  him  the 
proper  age  at  which  everyone's  education  should  termi- 
nate. He  was  very  anxious  to  dissuade  me  from  going 
up  to  Cambridge,  and  we  argued  intermittently  through 
all  my  visit. 

I  had  remembered  him  as  a  big  and  buoyant  man, 
striding  destructively  about  the  nursery  floor  of  my 
•childhood,  and  saluting  my  existence  by  slaps,  loud 
laughter,  and  questions  about  half  herrings  and  half 
•eggs  subtly  framed  to  puzzle  and  confuse  my  mind. 

/t  see  him  for  some  years  until  my  father's  death, 
and  then  he  seemed  rather  smaller,  though  still  a  fair 
size,  yellow  instead  of  red  and  much  less  radiantly 


IN   STAFFORDSHIRE         157 

aggressive.  This  altered  effect  was  due  not  so  much  to 
my  own  changed  perspectives,  I  fancy,  as  to  the  facts 
that  he  was  suffering  for  continuous  cigar  smoking,  and 
being  taken  in  hand  by  his  adolescent  daughters  who 
had  just  returned  from  school. 

During  my  first  visit  there  was  a  perpetual  series 
of — the  only  word  is  rows,  between  them  and  him. 
Up  to  the  age  of  fifteen  or  thereabouts,  he  had  main- 
tained his  ascendancy  over  them  by  simple  old-fashioned 
physical  chastisement.  Then  after  an  interlude  of  a 
year  it  had  dawned  upon  them  that  power  had  mysteri- 
ously departed  from  him.  He  had  tried  stopping  their 
pocket  money,  but  they  found  their  mother  financially 
amenable;  besides  which  it  was  fundamental  to  my 
uncle's  attitude  that  he  should  give  them  money  freely. 
Not  to  do  so  would  seem  like  admitting  a  difficulty  in 
making  it.  So  that  after  he  had  stopped  their  allow- 
ances for  the  fourth  time  Sybil  and  Gertrude  were 
prepared  to  face  beggary  without  a  qualm.  It  had 
been  his  pride  to  give  them  the  largest  allowance  of 
any  girls  at  the  school,  not  even  excepting  the  grand- 
daughter of  Fladden  the  Borax  King,  and  his  soul  re- 
coiled from  this  discipline  as  it  had  never  recoiled 
from  the  ruder  method  of  the  earlier  phase.  Both 
girls  had  developed  to  a  high  pitch  in  their  mutual 
recriminations  a  gift  for  damaging  retort,  and  he  found 
it  an  altogether  deadlier  thing  than  the  power  of  the 
raised  voice  that  had  always  cowed  my  aunt.  When- 
ever he  became  heated  with  them,  they  frowned  as  if 
involuntarily,  drew  in  their  breath  sharply,  said: 

"Daddy,  you  really  must  not  say  "  and  corrected 

his  pronunciation.  Then,  at  a  great  advantage,  they 
resumed  the  discussion.  .  .  . 

My  uncle's  views  about  Cambridge,  however,  were 
perfectly  clear  and  definite.  It  was  waste  of  time  and 
money.  It  was  all  damned  foolery.  Did  they  make 


158      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

a  man  a  better  business  man?  Not  a  bit  of  it.  He  gave 
instances.  It  spoilt  a  man  for  business  by  giving  him 
"false  ideas."  Some  men  said  that  at  college  a  man 
formed  useful  friendships.  What  use  were  friendships 
to  a  business  man?  He  might  get  to  know  lords,  but, 
as  my  uncle  pointed  out,  a  lord's  requirements  in  his 
line  of  faience  were  little  greater  than  a  common  man's. 
If  college  introduced  him  to  hotel  proprietors  there 
might  be  something  in  it.  Perhaps  it  helped  a  man 
into  Parliament,  Parliament  still  being  a  confused 
retrogressive  corner  in  the  world  where  lawyers  and 
suchlike  sheltered  themselves  from  the  onslaughts  of 
common-sense  behind  a  fog  of  Latin  and  Greek  and 
twaddle  and  tosh;  but  I  wasn't  the  sort  to  go  into 
Parliament,  unless  I  meant  to  be  a  lawyer.  Did  I 
mean  to  be  a  lawyer?  It  cost  no  end  of  money,  and 
was  full  of  uncertainties,  and  there  were  no  judges  nor 
great  solicitors  among  my  relations.  "  Young  chaps 
think  they  get  on  by  themselves,"  said  my  uncle. 
"  It  isn't  so.  Not  unless  they  take  their  coats  off. 
I  took  mine  off  before  I  was  your  age  by  nigh  a 
year." 

We  were  at  cross  purposes  from  the  outset,  because 
I  did  not  think  men  lived  to  make  money;  and  I  was 
obtuse  to  the  hints  he  was  throwing  out  at  the  possi- 
bilities of  his  own  potbank,  not  willfully  obtuse,  but 
just  failing  to  penetrate  his  meaning.  Whatever  City 
Merchants  had  or  had  not  done  for  me,  Flack,  Topham 
and  old  Gates  had  certainly  barred  my  mistaking  the 
profitable  production  and  sale  of  lavatory  basins  and 
bathroom  fittings  for  the  highest  good.  It  was  only 
upon  reflection  that  it  dawned  upon  me  that  the 
splendid  chance  for  a  young  fellow  with  my  uncle, 
"  me,  having  no  son  of  my  own,"  was  anything  but  an 
illustration  for  comparison  with  my  own  chosen  career. 

I  still  remember  very  distinctly  my  uncle's  talk,— 


STAFFORDSHIRE         159 

he  loved  to  speak  "reet  Staffordshire" — his  rather 
flabby  face  with  the  mottled  complexion  that  told  of 
crude  ill-regulated  appetites,  his  clumsy  gestures — he 
kept  emphasising  his  points  by  prodding  at  me  with 
his  finger — the  ill-worn,  costly,  grey  tweed  clothes,  the 
watch  chain  of  plain  solid  gold,  and  soft  felt  hat  thrust 
back  from  his  head.  He  tackled  me  first  in  the 
garden  after  lunch,  and  then  tried  to  raise  me  to  en- 
thusiasm by  taking  me  to  his  potbank  and  showing 
me  its  organisation,  from  the  dusty  grinding  mills  in. 
which  whitened  men  worked  and  coughed,  through  the 
highly  ventilated  glazing  room  in  which  strangely 
masked  girls  looked  ashamed  of  themselves, — "  They'll 
risk  death,  the  fools,  to  show  their  faces  to  a  man," 
said  my  uncle,  quite  audibly — to  the  firing  kilns  and 
the  glazing  kilns,  and  so  round  the  whole  place  to  the 
railway  siding  and  the  gratifying  spectacle  of  three 
trucks  laden  with  executed  orders. 

Then  we  went  up  a  creaking  outside  staircase  to  his 
little  office,  and  he  showed  off  before  me  for  a  while, 
with  one  or  two  subordinates  and  the  telephone. 

"  None  of  your  Gas,"  he  said,  "  all  this.  It's  Real 
every  bit  of  it.  Hard  cash  and  hard  glaze." 

"  Yes,"  I  said,  with  memories  of  a  carelessly  read 
pamphlet  in  my  mind,  and  without  any  satirical  in- 
tention, "  I  suppose  you  must  use  lead  in  your  glazes  ?  " 

Whereupon  I  found  I  had  tapped  the  ruling  griev- 
ance of  my  uncle's  life.  He  hated  leadless  glazes  more 
than  he  hated  anything,  except  the  benevolent  people 
who  had  organised  the  agitation  for  their  use.  "  Lead- 
less  glazes  ain't  only  fit  for  buns,"  he  said.  "  Let  me 
tell  you,  my  boy " 

He  began  in  a  voice  of  bland  persuasiveness  that 
presently  warmed  to  anger,  to  explain  the  whole 
matter.  I  hadn't  the  rights  of  the  matter  at  all. 
Firstly,  there  was  practically  no  such  thing  as  lead 


160      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

poisoning.  Secondly,  not  everyone  was  liable  to  lead 
poisoning,  and  it  would  be  quite  easy  to  pick  out  the 
susceptible  types — as  soon  as  they  had  it — and  put 
them  to  other  work.  Thirdly,  the  evil  effects  of  lead 
poisoning  were  much  exaggerated.  Fourthly,  and  this 
was  in  a  particularly  confidential  undertone,  many  of 
the  people  liked  to  get  lead  poisoning,  especially  the 
women,  because  it  caused  abortion.  I  might  not  be- 
lieve it,  but  he  knew  it  for  a  fact.  Fifthly,  the  work- 
people simply  would  not  learn  the  gravity  of  the  dan- 
ger, and  would  eat  with  unwashed  hands,  and  incur 
all  sorts  of  risks,  so  that  as  my  uncle  put  it:  "the 
fools  deserve  what  they  get."  Sixthly,  he  and  sev- 
eral associated  firms  had  organised  a  simple  and 
generous  insurance  scheme  against  lead-poisoning 
risks.  Seventhly,  he  never  wearied  in  rational  (as 
distinguished  from  excessive,  futile  and  expensive) 
precautions  against  the  disease.  Eighthly,  in  the 
ill-equipped  shops  of  his  minor  competitors  lead 
poisoning  was  a  frequent  and  virulent  evil,  and  people 
had  generalised  from  these  exceptional  cases.  The 
small  shops,  he  hazarded,  looking  out  of  the  cracked 
and  dirty  window  at  distant  chimneys,  might  be  ad- 
vantageously closed.  .  .  . 

"  But  what's  the  good  of  talking  ?  "  said  my  uncle, 
getting  off  the  table  on  which  he  had  been  sitting. 
"  Seems  to  me  there'll  come  a  time  when  a  master 
will  get  fined  if  he  don't  run  round  the  works  blowing 
his  girls'  noses  for  them.  That's  about  what  it'll 
come  to." 

He  walked  to  the  black  mantelpiece  and  stood  on 
the  threadbare  rug,  and  urged  me  not  to  be  misled  by 
the  stories  of  prejudiced  and  interested  enemies  of  our 
national  industries. 

"  They'll  get  a  strike  one  of  these  days,  of  employ- 
ers, and  then  we'll  see  a  bit,"  he  said.  "  They'll  drive 

: 


IN    STAFFORDSHIRE          161 

Capital  abroad  and  then  they'll  whistle  to  get  it  back 
again."  .  .  . 

He  led  the  way  down  the  shaky  wooden  steps 
and  cheered  up  to  tell  me  of  his  way  of  checking  his 
coal  consumption.  He  exchanged  a  ferocious  greet- 
ing with  one  or  two  workpeople,  and  so  we  came 
out  of  the  factory  gates  into  the  ugly  narrow  streets, 
paved  with  a  peculiarly  hard  diapered  brick  of  an 
unpleasing  inky-blue  colour,  and  bordered  with  the 
mean  and  squalid  homes  of  his  workers.  Doors  stood 
open  and  showed  grimy  interiors,  and  dirty  ill-clad 
children  played  in  the  kennel. 

We  passed  a  sickly-looking  girl  with  a  sallow  face, 
who  dragged  her  limbs  and  peered  at  us  dimly  with 
painful  eyes.  She  stood  back,  as  partly  blinded  people 
will  do,  to  allow  us  to  pass,  although  there  was  plenty 
of  room  for  us. 

I  glanced  back  at  her. 

"  That's  ploombism  "  said  my  uncle  casually. 

"What?"  said  I. 

"  Ploombism.  And  the  other  day  I  saw  a  fool  of 
a  girl,  and  what  d'you  think?  She'd  got  a  basin  that 
hadn't  been  fired,  a  cracked  piece  of  biscuit  it  was,  up 
on  the  shelf  over  her  head,  just  all  over  glaze,  killing 
glaze,  man,  and  she  was  putting  up  her  hand  if  you 
please,  and  eating  her  dinner  out  of  it.  Got  her  dinner 
in  it! 

"  Eating  her  dinner  out  of  it,'*  he  repeated  in  loud 
and  bitter  tones,  and  punched  me  hard  in  the  ribs. 

"  And  then  they  comes  to  that — and  grumbles.  Ana 
the  fools  up  in  Westminster  want  you  to  put  in  fans 
here  and  fans  there — the  Longton  fools  have.  .  .  . 
And  then  eating  their  dinners  out  of  it  all  the 
time!"  .  .  . 

At  high  tea  that  night — my  uncle  was  still  holding 
out  against  evening  dinner — Sibyl  and  Gertrude  made 


162      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

what  was  evidently  a  concerted  demand  for  a  motor- 
car. 

"You've  got  your  mother's  brougham/'  he  said, 
"that's  good  enough  for  you."  But  he  seemed  shaken 
by  the  fact  that  some  Burslem  rival  was  launching  out 
with  the  new  invention.  "  He  spoils  his  girls/'  he  re- 
marked. "  He's  a  fool/'  and  became  thoughtful. 

Afterwards  he  asked  me  to  come  to  him*  into  his 
study;  it  was  a  room  with  a  writing-desk  and  full  of 
pieces  of  earthenware  and  suchlike  litter,  and  we  had 
our  great  row  about  Cambridge. 

"Have  you  thought  things  over,  Dick?"  he  said. 

"I  think  I'll  go  to  Trinity,  Uncle,"  I  said  firmly. 
"  I  want  to  go  to  Trinity.  It  is  a  great  college." 

He  was  manifestly  chagrined.  "  You're  a  fool,"  he 
said. 

I  made  no  answer. 

"  You're  a  damned  fool,"  he  said.  "  But  I  suppose 

you've  got  to  do  it.  You  could  have  come  here 

That  don't  matter,  though,  now.  .  .  You'll  have  your 
time  and  spend  your  money,  and  be  a  poor  half-starved 
clergyman,  mucking  about  with  .the  women  all  the  day 
and  afraid  to  have  one  of  your  own  ever,  or  you'll  be 
a  schoolmaster  or  some  such  fool  for  the  rest  of  your 
life.  Or  some  newspaper  chap.  That's  what  you'll 
get  from  Cambridge.  I'm  half  a  mind  not  to  let  you. 
Eh?  More  than  half  a  mind.  .  .  ." 

"  You've  got  to  do  the  thing  you  can,"  he  said,  after 
a  pause,  "  and  likely  it's  what  you're  fitted  for." 

§4 

I  paid  several  short  visits  to  Staffordshire  during 
my  Cambridge  days,  and  always  these  relations  of  mine 
produced  the  same  effect  of  hardness.  My  uncle's 
thoughts  had  neither  atmosphere  nor  mystery.  He 
lived  in  a  different  universe  from  the  dreams  of  scien- 
tific construction  that  filled  my  mind.  He  could  as  eas- 


IN    STAFFORDSHIRE         163 

ily  have  understood  Chinese  poetry.  His  motives  were 
made  up  of  intense  rivalries  with  other  men  of  his 
class  and  kind,  a  few  vindictive  hates  springing  from 
real  and  fancied  slights,  a  habit  of  acquisition  that  had 
become  a  second  nature,  a  keen  love  both  of  efficiency 
and  display  in  his  own  affairs.  He  seemed  to  me  to 
have  no  sense  of  the  state,  no  sense  and  much  less  any 
love  of  beauty,  no  charity  and  no  sort  of  religious  feel- 
ing whatever.  He  had  strong  bodily  appetites,  he  ate 
and  drank  freely,  smoked  a  great  deal,  and  occasionally 
was  carried  off  by  his  passions  for  a  "  bit  of  a  spree  " 
to  Birmingham  or  Liverpool  or  Manchester.  The  in- 
dulgences of  these  occasions  were  usually  followed  by 
a  period  of  reaction,  when  he  was  urgent  for  the  sup- 
pression of  nudity  in  the  local  Art  Gallery  and  a  harsh 
and  forcible  elevation  of  the  superficial  morals  of  the 
valley.  And  he  spoke  of  the  ladies  who  ministered  to 
the  delights  of  his  jolly-dog  period,  when  he  spoke 
of  them  at  all,  by  the  unprintable  feminine  equivalent. 
My  aunt  he  treated  with  a  kindly  contempt  and  con- 
siderable financial  generosity,  but  his  daughters  tore 
his  heart;  he  was  so  proud  of  them,  so  glad  to  find 
them  money  to  spend,  so  resolved  to  own  them,  so  in- 
stinctively jealous  of  every  man  who  came  near 
them. 

My  uncle  has  been  the  clue  to  a  great  number  of 
men  for  me.  He  was  an  illuminating  extreme.  I  have 
learnt  what  not  to  expect  from  them  through  him,  and 
to  comprehend  resentments  and  dangerous  sudden  an- 
tagonisms I  should  have  found  incomprehensible  in  their 
more  complex  forms,  if  I  had  not  first  seen  them  in  him 
in  their  feral  state. 

With  his  soft  felt  hat  at  the  back  of  his  head,  his 
rather  heavy,  rather  mottled  face,  his  rationally  thick 
boots  and  slouching  tweed-clad  form,  a  little  round- 
shouldered  and  very  obstinate  looking,  he  strolls 
through  all  my  speculations  sucking  his  teeth  audibly, 


164      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

and  occasionally  throwing  out  a  shrewd  aphorism,  the 
intractable  unavoidable  ore  of  the  new  civilisation. 

Essentially  he  was  simple.  Generally  speaking,  he 
hated  and  despised  in  equal  measure  whatever  seemed 
to  suggest  that  he  personally  was  not  the  most  perfect 
human  being  conceivable.  He  hated  all  education  after 
fifteen  because  he  had  had  no  education  after  fifteen, 
he  hated  all  people  who  did  not  have  high  tea  until 
he  himself  under  duress  gave  up  high  tea,  he  hated 
every  game  except  football,  which  he  had  played  and 
could  judge,  he  hated  all  people  who  spoke  foreign 
languages  because  he  knew  no  language  but  Stafford- 
shire, he  hated  all  foreigners  because  he  was  English, 
and  all  foreign  ways  because  they  were  not  his  ways. 
Also  he  hated  particularly,  and  in  this  order,  London- 
ers, Yorkshiremen,  Scotch,  Welch  and  Irish,  because 
they  were  not  "  reet  Staffordshire,"  and  he  hated  all 
other  Staffordshire  men  as  insufficiently  "  reet."  He 
wanted  to  have  all  his  own  women  inviolate,  and  to 
fancy  he  had  a  call  upon  every  other  woman  in  the 
world.  He  wanted  to  have  the  best  cigars  and  the 
best  brandy  in  the  world  to  consume  or  give  away 
magnificently,  and  every  one  else  to  have  inferior  ones. 
(His  billiard  table  was  an  extra  large  size,  specially 
made  and  very  inconvenient.)  And  he  hated  Trade 
Unions  because  they  interfered  with  his  autocratic  di- 
rection of  his  works,  and  his  workpeople  because  they 
were  not  obedient  and  untiring  mechanisms  to  do  his 
bidding.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  very  naive,  vigorous  human 
being.  He  was  about  as  much  civilised,  about  as  much 
tamed  to  the  ideas  of  collective  action  and  mutual  con- 
sideration as  a  Central  African  negro. 

There  are  hordes  of  such  men  as  he  throughout  all 
the  modern  industrial  world.  You  will  find  the  same 
type  with  the  slightest  modifications  in  the  Pas  de 
Calais  or  Rhenish  Prussia  or  New  Jersey  or  North 


IN    STAFFORDSHIRE          165 

Italy.  No  doubt  you  would  find  it  in  New  Japan. 
These  men  have  raised  themselves  up  from  the  general 
mass  of  untrained,  uncultured,  poorish  people  in  a  hard 
industrious  selfish  struggle.  To  drive  others  they  have 
had  first  to  drive  themselves.  They  have  never  yet  had 
occasion  nor  leisure  to  think  of  the  state  or  social  life 
as  a  whole,  and  as  for  dreams  or  beauty,  it  was  a  con- 
dition of  survival  that  they  should  ignore  such  cravings. 
All  the  distinctive  qualities  of  my  uncle  can  be  thought 
of  as  dictated  by  his  conditions;  his  success  and  harsh- 
ness, the  extravagances  that  expressed  his  pride  in  mak- 
ing money,  the  uncongenial  luxury  that  sprang  from 
rivalry,  and  his  self-reliance,  his  contempt  for  broad 
views,  his  contempt  for  everything  that  he  could  not 
understand. 

His  daughters  were  the  inevitable  children  of  his 
life.  Queer  girls  they  were !  Curiously  "  spirited  "  as 
people  phrase  it,  and  curiously  limited.  During  my 
Cambridge  days  I  went  down  to  Staffordshire  several 
times.  My  uncle,  though  he  still  resented  my  refusal  to 
go  into  his  business,  was  also  in  his  odd  way  proud  of 
me.  I  was  his  nephew  and  poor  relation,  and  yet  there 
I  was,  a  young  gentleman  learning  all  sorts  of  unre- 
munerative  things  in  the  grandest  manner,  "Latin  and 
mook,"  while  the  sons  of  his  neighbours,  not  nephews 
merely,  but  sons,  stayed  unpolished  in  their  native  town. 
Every  time  I  went  down  I  found  extensive  changes  and 
altered  relations,  and  before  I  had  settled  down  to  them 
off  I  went  again.  I  don't  think  I  was  one  person  to 
them;  I  was  a  series  of  visitors.  There  is  a  gulf  of 
ages  between  a  gaunt  schoolboy  of  sixteen  in  unbecom- 
ing mourning  and  two  vividly  self-conscious  girls  of 
eighteen  and  nineteen,  but  a  Cambridge  "  man  "  of  two 
and  twenty  with  a  first  arid  good  tennis  and  a  growing 
social  experience,  is  a  fair  contemporary  for  two  girls 
of  twenty-three  and  twenty-four. 


166      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

A  motor-car  appeared,  I  think  in  my  second  visit,  a 
bottle-green  affair  that  opened  behind,  had  dark  purple 
cushions,  and  was  controlled  mysteriously  by  a  man  in 
shiny  black  costume  and  a  flat  cap.  The  high  tea  had 
been  shifted  to  seven  and  rechristened  dinner,  but  my 
uncle  would  not  dress  nor  consent  to  have  wine;  and 
after  one  painful  experiment,  I  gathered,  and  a  scene, 
he  put  his  foot  down  and  prohibited  any  but  high- 
necked  dresses. 

"  Daddy's  perfectly  impossible/*  Sybil  told  me. 

The    foot    had    descended    vehemently !      "  My    own 

daughters !  "  he  had  said,  "  dressed  up  like "  — and 

had  arrested  himself  and  fumbled  and  decided  to  say — 
"  actresses,  and  showin'  their  fat  arms  for  every  fool  to 
stare  at ! "  Nor  would  he  have  any  people  invited  to 
dinner.  He  didn't,  he  had  explained,  want  strangers 
poking  about  in  his  house  when  he  came  home  tired. 
So  such  calling  as  occurred  went  on  during  his  absence 
in  the  afternoon. 

One  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  life  of  these  ascendant 
families  of  the  industrial  class  to  which  wealth  has 
come,  is  its  tremendous  insulations.  There  were  no 
customs  of  intercourse  in  the  Five  Towns.  All  the 
isolated  prosperities  of  the  district  sprang  from  econo- 
mising, hard  driven  homes,  in  which  there  was  neither 
time  nor  means  for  hospitality.  Social  intercourse  cen- 
tred very  largely  upon  the  church  or  chapel,  and  the 
chapels  were  better  at  bringing  people  together  than 
the  Establishment  to  which  my  cousins  belonged.  Their 
chief  outlet  to  the  wider  world  lay  therefore  through 
the  acquaintances  they  had  formed  at  school,  and 
through  two  much  less  prosperous  families  of  relations 
who  lived  at  Longton  and  Hanley.  A  number  of  gos- 
siping friendships  with  old  school  mates  were  "  kept 
up,"  and  my  cousins  would  "  spend  the  afternoon  "  or 
even  spend  the  day  with  these;  such  occasions  led  to 


IN    STAFFORDSHIRE          167 

other  encounters  and  interlaced  with  the  furtive  cor- 
respondences and  snatched  meetings  that  formed  the 
emotional  thread  of  their  lives.  When  the  billiard 
table  had  been  new,  my  uncle  had  taken  to  asking  in 
a  few  approved  friends  for  an  occasional  game,  but 
mostly  the  billiard-room  was  for  glory  and  the  girls. 
Both  of  them  played  very  well.  They  never,  so  far  as 
I  know,  dined  out,  and  when  at  last  after  bitter  do- 
mestic conflicts  they  began  to  go  to  dances,  they  went 
with  the  quavering  connivance  of  my  aunt,  and  changed 
into  ball  frocks  at  friends'  houses  on  the  way.  There 
was  a  tennis  club  that  formed  a  convenient  afternoon 
rendezvous,  and  I  recall  that  in  the  period  of  my  ear- 
lier visits  the  young  bloods  of  the  district  found  much 
satisfaction  in  taking  girls  for  drives  in  dog-carts  and 
suchlike  high-wheeled  vehicles,  a  disposition  that  died 
in  tangled  tandems  at  the  apparition  of  motor-cars. 

My  aunt  and  uncle  had  conceived  no  plans  in  life 
for  their  daughters  at  all.  In  the  undifferentiated 
industrial  community  from  which  they  had  sprung, 
girls  got  married  somehow,  and  it  did  not  occur  to 
them  that  the  concentration  of  property  that  had  made 
them  wealthy,  had  cut  their  children  off  from  the  gen- 
eral social  sea  in  whch  their  own  awkward  meeting 
had  occurred,  without  necessarily  opening  any  other 
world  in  exchange.  My  uncle  was  too  much  occupied 
with  the  works  and  his  business  affairs  and  his  private 
vices  to  philosophise  about  his  girls;  he  wanted  them 
just  to  keep  girls,  preferably  about  sixteen,  and  to  be 
a  sort  of  animated  flowers  and  make  home  bright  and 
be  given  things.  He  was  irritated  that  they  would 
not  remain  at  this,  and  still  more  irritated  that  they 
failed  to  suppress  altogether  their  natural  interest  in 
young  men.  The  tandems  would  be  steered  by  weird 
and  devious  routes  to  evade  the  bare  chance  of  his 
bloodshot  eye.  My  aunt  seemed  to  have  no  ideas  what- 


168      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

ever  about  what  was  likely  to  happen  to  her  children. 
She  had  indeed  no  ideas  about  anything;  she  took  her 
husband  and  the  days  as  they  came. 

I  can  see  now  the  pathetic  difficulty  of  my  cousins' 
position  in  life;  the  absence  of  any  guidance  or  in- 
struction or  provision  for  their  development.  They 
supplemented  the  silences  of  home  by  the  conversation 
of  schoolfellows  and  the  suggestions  of  popular  fiction. 
They  had  to  make  what  they  could  out  of  life  with 
such  hints  as  these.  The  church  was  far  too  modest 
to  offer  them  any  advice.  It  was  obtruded  upon  my 
mind  upon  my  first  visit  that  they  were  both  carrying 
on  correspondences  and  having  little  furtive  passings 
and  seeings  and  meetings  with  the  mysterious  owners 
of  certain  initials,  S.  and  L.  K.,  and,  if  I  remember 
rightly,  "  the  R.  N."  brothers  and  cousins,  I  suppose, 
of  their  friends.  The  same  thing  was  going  on,  with 
a  certain  intensification,  at  my  next  visit,  excepting 
only  that  the  initials  were  different.  But  when  I  came 
again  their  methods  were  maturer  or  I  was  no  longer 
a  negligible  quantity,  and  the  notes  and  the  initials 
were  no  longer  flaunted  quite  so  openly  in  my 
face. 

My  cousins  had  worked  it  out  from  the  indications 
of  their  universe  that  the  end  of  life  is  to  have  a  "  good 
time."  They  used  the  phrase.  That  and  the  drives 
in  dog-carts  were  only  the  first  of  endless  points  of 
resemblance  between  them  and  the  commoner  sort  of 
American  girl.  When  some  years  ago  I  paid  my  first 
and  only  visit  to  America  I  seemed  to  recover  my 
cousins'  atmosphere  as  soon  as  I  entered  the  train  at 
Euston.  There  were  three  girls  in  my  compartment 
supplied  with  huge  decorated  cases  of  sweets,  and  being 
seen  off  by  a  company  of  friends,  noisily  arch  and 
eager  about  the  "  steamer  letters  "  they  would  get  at 
Liverpool ;  they  were  the  very  soul-sisters  of  my  cousins. 


IN    STAFFORDSHIRE         169 

The  chief  elements  of  a  good  time,  as  my  cousins 
judged  it,  as  these  countless  thousands  of  rich  young 
women  judge  it,  are  a  petty  eventfulness,  laughter,  and 
to  feel  that  you  are  looking  well  and  attracting  atten- 
tion. Shopping  is  one  of  its  leading  joys.  You  buy 
things,  clothes  and  trinkets  for  yourself  and  presents 
for  your  friends.  Presents  always  seemed  to  be  flying 
about  in  that  circle;  flowers  and  boxes  of  sweets  were 
common  currency.  My  cousins  were  always  getting 
and  giving,  my  uncle  caressed  them  with  parcels  and 
cheques.  They  kissed  him  and  he  exuded  sovereigns 
as  a  stroked  Aphis  exudes  honey.  It  was  like  the  new 
language  of  the  Academy  of  Lagado  to  me,  and  I  never 
learnt  how  to  express  myself  in  it,  for  nature  and 
training  make  me  feel  encumbered  to  receive  presents 
and  embarrassed  in  giving  them.  But  then,  like  my 
father,  I  hate  and  distrust  possessions. 

Of  the  quality  of  their  private  imagination  I  never 
learnt  anything;  I  suppose  it  followed  the  lines  of  the 
fiction  they  read  and  was  romantic  and  sentimental. 
So  far  as  marriage  went,  the  married  state  seemed  at 
once  very  attractive  and  dreadfully  serious  to  them, 
composed  in  equal  measure  of  becoming  important  and 
becoming  old.  I  don't  know  what  they  thought  about 
children.  I  doubt  if  they  thought  about  them  at  all. 
It  was  very  secret  if  they  did. 

As  for  the  poor  and  dingy  people  all  about  them,  my 
cousins  were  always  ready  to  take  part  in  a  Charitable 
Bazaar.  They  were  unaware  of  any  economic  correla- 
tion of  their  own  prosperity  and  that  circumambient 
poverty,  and  they  knew  of  Trade  Unions  simply  as  dis- 
agreeable external  things  that  upset  my  uncle's  temper. 
They  knew  of  nothing  wrong  in  social  life  at  all  except 
that  there  were  "  Agitators."  It  surprised  them  a  lit- 
tle, I  think,  that  Agitators  were  not  more  drastically 
put  down.  But  they  had  a  sort  of  instinctive  dread 


170      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

of  social  discussion  as  of  something  that  might  breach 
the  happiness  of  their  ignorance.  .   .  . 


My  cousins  did  more  than  illustrate  Marx  for  me; 
they  also  undertook  a  stage  of  my  emotional  education. 
Their  method  in  that  as  in  everything  else  was  ex- 
tremely simple,  but  it  took  my  inexperience  by  surprise. 

It  must  have  been  on  my  third  visit  that  Sybil  took 
me  in  hand.  Hitherto  I  seemed  to  have  seen  her  only 
in  profile,  but  now  she  became  almost  completely  full 
face,  manifestly  regarded  me  with  those  violet  eyes  of 
hers.  She  passed  me  things  I  needed  at  breakfast  —  it 
was  the  first  morning  of  my  visit  —  before  I  asked  for 
them. 

When  young  men  are  looked  at  by  pretty  cousins, 
they  become  intensely  aware  of  those  cousins.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  I  had  always  admired  Sybil's  eyes 
very  greatly,  and  that  there  was  something  in  her  tem- 
perament congenial  to  mine.  It  was  odd  I  had  not 
noted  it  on  my  previous  visits. 

We  walked  round  the  garden  somewhen  that  morn- 
ing, and  talked  about  Cambridge.  She  asked  quite  a 
lot  of  questions  about  my  work  and  my  ambitions.  She 
said  she  had  always  felt  sure  I  was  clever. 

The  conversation  languished  a  little,  and  we  picked 
some  flowers  for  the  house.  Then  she  asked  if  I  could 
run.  I  conceded  her  various  starts  and  we  raced  up 
and  down  the  middle  garden  path.  Then,  a  little 
breathless,  we  went  into  the  new  twenty-five  guinea 
summer-house  at  the  end  of  the  herbaceous  border. 

We  sat  side  by  side,  pleasantly  hidden  from  the 
house,  and  she  became  anxious  about  her  hair,  which 
was  slightly  and  prettily  disarranged,  and  asked  me  to 
help  her  with  the  adjustment  of  a  hairpin.  I  had 
never  in  my  life  been  so  near  the  soft  curly  hair  and 


IN   STAFFORDSHIRE          171 

the  dainty  eyebrow  and  eyelid  and  warm  soft  cheek  of 
a  girl,  and  I  was  stirred 

It  stirs  me  now  to  recall  it. 

I  became  a  battleground  of  impulses  and  inhibitions. 

"  Thank  you,"  said  my  cousin,  and  moved  a  little 
away  from  me. 

She  began  to  talk  about  friendship,  and  lost  her 
thread  and  forgot  the  little  electric  stress  between  us 
in  a  rather  meandering  analysis  of  her  principal  girl 
friends. 

But  afterwards  she  resumed  her  purpose. 

I  went  to  bed  that  night  with  one  propostion  over- 
shadowing everything  else  in  my  mind,  namely,  that 
kissing  my  cousin  Sybil  was  a  difficult,  but  not  impos-i 
sible,  achievement.  I  do  not  recall  any  shadow  of  a 
doubt  whether  on  the  whole  it  was  worth  doing.  The 
thing  had  come  into  my  existence,  disturbing  and  in- 
terrupting its  flow  exactly  as  a  fever  does.  Sybil  had 
infected  me  with  herself. 

The  next  day  matters  came  to  a  crisis  in  the  little 
apstairs  sitting-room  which  had  been  assigned  me  as 
a  study  during  my  visit.  I  was  working  up  there,  or 
rather  trying  to  work  in  spite  of  the  outrageous  ca- 
pering of  some  very  primitive  elements  in  my  brain, 
when  she  came  up  to  me,  under  a  transparent  pretext 
of  looking  for  a  book. 

I  turned  round  and  then  got  up  at  the  sight  of  her. 
I  quite  forget  what  our  conversation  was  about,  but  I 
know  she  led  me  to  believe  I  might  kiss  her.  Then 
when  I  attempted  to  do  so  she  averted  her  face. 

"How  could  you?"  she  said;  4   I  didn't  mean  that!" 

That  remained  the  state  of  our  relations  for  two 
days.  I  developed  a  growing  irritation  with  and  re- 
sentment against  cousin  Sybil,  combined  with  an  in- 
tense desire  to  get  that  kiss  for  which  I  hungered  and 
thirsted.  Cousin  Sybil  went  about  in  the  happy  per- 


172       THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

suasion  that  I  was  madly  in  love  with  her,  and  her 
game,  so  far  as  she  was  concerned,  was  played  and 
won.  It  wasn't  until  I  had  fretted  for  two  days  that 
I  realised  that  I  was  being  used  for  the  commonest 
form  of  excitement  possible  to  a  commonplace  girl; 
that  dozens  perhaps  of  young  men  had  played  the  part 
of  Tantalus  at  cousin  Sybil's  lips.  I  walked  about  my 
room  at  nights,  damning  her  and  calling  her  by  terms 
which  on  the  whole  she  rather  deserved,  while  Sybil 
went  to  sleep  pitying  "poor  old  Dick!" 

*'  Damn  it !  "  I  said,  "  I  will  be  equal  with  you." 

But  I  never  did  equalise  the  disadvantage,  and  per- 
haps it's  as  well,  for  I  fancy  that  sort  of  revenge  cuts 
both  people  too  much  for  a  rational  man  to  seek  it.  .  .  .. 

"  Why  are  men  so  silly  ? "  said  cousin  Sybil  next 
morning,  wriggling  back  with  down-bent  head  to  re- 
lease herself  from  what  should  have  been  a  compelling 
embrace. 

"  Confound  it ! "  I  said  with  a  flash  of  clear  vision. 
"  You  started  this  game." 

"Oh!" 

She  stood  back  against  a  hedge  of  roses,  a  little 
flushed  and  excited  and  interested,  and  ready  for  the 
delightful  defensive  if  I  should  renew  my  attack. 

"  Beastly  hot  for  scuffling,"  I  said,  white  with  anger. 
"  I  don't  know  whether  I'm  so  keen  on  kissing  you, 
Sybil,  after  all.  I  just  thought  you  wanted  me  to." 

I  could  have  whipped  her,  and  my  voice  stung  more 
than  my  words, 

Our  eyes  met;  a  real  hatred  in  hers  leaping  up  to 
meet  mine. 

"Let's  play  tennis,"  I  said,  after  a  moment's  pause. 

"  No,"  she  answered  shortly,  "  I'm  going  indoors." 

"  Very  well." 

And  that  ended  the  affair  with  Sybil. 

I  was  still  in  the  full  glare  of  this  disillusionment 


IN   STAFFORDSHIRE         173 

when  Gertrude  awoke  from  some  preoccupation  to  an 
interest  in  my  existence.  She  developed  a  disposition 
to  touch  my  hand  by  accident,  and  let  her  fingers  rest 
in  contact  with  it  for  a  moment, — she  had  pleasant  soft 
hands; — she  began  to  drift  into  summer  houses  with 
me,  to  let  her  arm  rest  trustfully  against  mine,  to  ask 
questions  about  Cambridge.  They  were  much  the 
same  questions  that  Sybil  had  asked.  But  I  controlled 
myself  and  maintained  a  profile  of  intelligent  and 
entirely  civil  indifference  to  her  blandishments. 

What  Gertrude  made  of  it  came  out  one  evening  in 
some  talk — I  forget  about  what — with  Sybil. 

"Oh,  Dick!"  said  Gertrude  a  little  impatiently, 
"Dick's  Pi." 

And  I  never  disillusioned  her  by  any  subsequent 
levity  from  this  theory  of  my  innate  and  virginal  piety. 

§  6 

It  was  against  this  harsh  and  crude  Staffordshire 
background  that  I  think  I  must  have  seen  Margaret 
for  the  first  time.  I  say  I  think  because  it  is  quite 
possible  that  we  had  passed  each  other  in  the  streets  of 
Cambridge,  no  doubt  with  that  affectation  of  mutual 
disregard  which  was  once  customary  between  under- 
graduates and  Newnham  girls.  But  if  that  was  so  I 
had  noted  nothing  of  the  slender  graciousness  that 
shone  out  so  pleasingly  against  the  bleaker  midland 
surroundings. 

She  was  a  younger  schoolfellow  of  my  cousins',  and 
the  step-daughter  of  Seddon,  a  prominent  solicitor  of 
Burslem.  She  was  not  only  not  in  my  cousins'  genera- 
tion but  not  in  their  set,  she  was  one  of  a  small  hard- 
working group  who  kept  immaculate  note-books,  and 
did  as  much  as  is  humanly  possible  of  that  insensate 
pile  of  written  work  that  the  Girls'  Public  School  move- 
ment has  inflicted  upon  school-girls.  She  really  learnt 


174      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

French  and  German  admirably  and  thoroughly,  she  got 
as  far  in  mathematics  as  an  unflinching  industry  can 
carry  any  one  with  no  great  natural  aptitude,  and  she 
went  up  to  Bennett  Hall,  Newnham,  after  the  usual 
conflict  with  her  family,  to  work  for  the  History  Tripos. 

There  in  her  third  year  she  made  herself  thoroughly 
ill  through  overwork,  so  ill  that  she  had  to  give  up 
Newnham  altogether  and  go  abroad  with  her  step- 
mother. She  made  herself  ill,  as  so  many  girls  do  in 
those  university  colleges,  through  the  badness  of  her 
home  and  school  training.  She  thought  study  must 
needs  be  a  hard  straining  of  the  mind.  She  worried 
her  work,  she  gave  herself  no  leisure  to  see  it  as  a 
whole,  she  felt  herself  not  making  headway  and  she 
cut  her  games  and  exercise  in  order  to  increase  her 
hours  of  toil,  and  worked  into  the  night.  She  carried 
a  knack  of  laborious  thoroughness  into  the  blind  alleys 
and  inessentials  of  her  subject.  It  didn't  need  the  bad- 
ness of  the  food  for  which  Bennett  Hall  is  celebrated 
and  the  remarkable  dietary  of  nocturnal  cocoa,  cakes 
and  soft  biscuits  with  which  the  girls  have  supplemented 
it,  to  ensure  her  collapse.  Her  mother  brought  her 
home,  fretting  and  distressed,  and  then  finding  her 
hopelessly  unhappy  at  home,  took  her  and  her  half- 
brother,  a  rather  ailing  youngster  of  ten  who  died  three 
years  later,  for  a  journey  to  Italy. 

Italy  did  much  to  assuage  Margaret's  chagrin.  1 
think  all  three  of  them  had  a  very  good  time  there* 
At  home  Mr.  Seddon,  her  step-father,  played  the  part 
of  a  well-meaning  blight  by  reason  of  the  moods  that 
arose  from  nervous  dyspepsia.  They  went  to  Florence, 
equipped  with  various  introductions  and  much  sound 
advice  from  sympathetic  Cambridge  friends,  and  hav- 
ing acquired  an  ease  in  Italy  there,  went  on  to  Siena, 
Orvieto,  and  at  last  Rome.  They  returned,  if  I  remem- 
ber rightly,  by  Pisa,  Genoa,  Milan  sr.c?  P^ris.  Si* 


IN   STAFFORDSHIRE         175 

months  or  more  they  had  had  abroad,  and  now  Mar- 
garet was  back  in  Burslem,  in  health  again  and  con- 
sciously a  very  civilised  person. 

New  ideas  were  abroad,  it  was  Maytime  and  a  spring 
of  abundant  flowers — daffodils  were  particularly  good 
that  year — and  Mrs.  Seddon  celebrated  her  return  by 
giving  an  afternoon  reception  at  short  notice,  with  the 
clear  intention  of  letting  every  one  out  into  the  garden 
if  the  weather  held. 

The  Seddons  had  a  big  old  farmhouse  modified  to 
modern  ideas  of  comfort  on  the  road  out  towards  Mis- 
terton,  with  an  orchard  that  had  been  rather  pleasantly 
subdued  from  use  to  ^ornament.  It  had  rich  blossom- 
ing cherry  and  apple  trees.  Large  patches  of  grass 
full  of  nodding  yellow  trumpets  had  been  left  amidst 
the  not  too  precisely  mown  grass,  which  was  as  it  were 
grass  path  with  an  occasional  lapse  into  lawn  or  glade. 
And  Margaret,  hatless,  with  the  fair  hair  above  her 
thin,  delicately  pink  face  very  simply  done,  came  to 
meet  our  rather  too  consciously  dressed  party, — we  had 
come  in  the  motor  four  strong,  with  my  aunt  in  grey 
silk.  Margaret  wore  a  soft  flowing  flowered  blue  dress 
of  diaphanous  material,  all  unconnected  with  the  fash- 
ion and  tied  with  pretty  ribbons,  like  a  slenderer,  un- 
bountiful  Primavera. 

It  \vas  one  of  those  May  days  that  ape  the  light  and 
heat  of  summer,  and  I  remember  disconnectedly  quite 
a  number  of  brightly  lit  figures  and  groups  walking 
about,  and  a  white  gate  between  orchard  and  garden 
and  a  large  lawn  with  an  oak  tree  and  a  red  Georgian 
house  with  a  verandah  and  open  French  windows, 
through  which  the  tea  drinking  had  come  out  upon  the 
moss-edged  flagstones  even  as  Mrs.  Seddon  had  planned. 

The  party  was  almost  entirely  feminine  except  for  a 
little  curate  with  a  large  head,  a  good  voice  and  a 
radiant  manner,  who  was  obviously  attracted  by  Mar- 


176      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

garet,  and  two  or  three  young  husbands  still  sufficiently 
addicted  to  their  wives  to  accompany  them.  One  of 
them  I  recall  as  a  quite  romantic  figure  with  abundant 
blond  curly  hair  on  which  was  poised  a  grey  felt  hat 
encircled  by  a  refined  black  band.  He  wore,  more- 
over, a  loose  rich  shot  silk  tie  of  red  and  purple,  a  long 
frock  coat,  grey  trousers  and  brown  shoes,  and  pres- 
ently he  removed  his  hat  and  carried  it  in  one  hand. 
There  were  two  tennis-playing  youths  besides  myself. 
There  was  also  one  father  with  three  daughters  in 
anxious  control,  a  father  of  the  old  school  scarcely  half 
broken  in,  reluctant,  rebellious  and  consciously  and  con- 
scientiously "reet  Staffordshire."  The  daughters  were 
all  alert  to  suppress  the  possible  plungings,  the  un- 
desirable humorous  impulses  of  this  almost  feral  guest. 
They  nipped  his  very  gestures  in  the  bud.  The  rest  of 
the  people  were  mainly  mothers  with  daughters — 
daughters  of  all  ages,  and  a  scattering  of  aunts,  and 
there  was  a  tendency  to  clotting,  parties  kept  together 
and  regarded  parties  suspiciously.  Mr.  Seddon  was  in 
hiding,  I  think,  all  the  time,  though  not  formally  ab- 
sent. 

Matters  centred  upon  the  tea  in  the  long  room  of 
the  French  windows,  where  four  trim  maids  went  to 
and  fro  busily  between  the  house  and  the  clumps  of 
people  seated  or  standing  before  it;  and  tennis  and 
croquet  were  intermittently  visible  and  audible  beyond 
a  bank  of  rockwork  rich  with  the  spikes  and  cups  and 
bells  of  high  spring. 

Mrs.  Seddon  presided  at  the  tea  urn,  and  Margaret 
partly  assisted  and  partly  talked  to  me  and  my  cousin 
Sibyl — Gertrude  had  found  a  disused  and  faded  initial 
and  was  partnering  him  at  tennis  in  a  state  of  gentle 
revival — while  their  mother  exercised  a  divided  chaper- 
onage  from  a  seat  near  Mrs.  Seddon.  The  little  curate, 
stirring  a  partially  empty  cup  of  tea,  mingled  with  our 


IN   STAFFORDSHIRE         177 

party,  and  preluded,  I  remember,  every  observation 
he  made  by  a  vigorous  resumption  of  stirring. 

We  talked  of  Cambridge,  and  Margaret  kept  us  to 
it.  The  curate  was  a  Selwyn  man  and  had  taken  a 
pass  degree  in  theology,  but  Margaret  had  come  to 
Gaylord's  lecturers  in  Trinity  for  a  term  before  her 
breakdown,  and  understood  these  differences.  She  had 
the  eagerness  of  an  exile  to  hear  the  old  familiar  names 
of  places  and  personalities.  We  capped  familiar  anec- 
dotes and  were  enthusiastic  about  Kings'  Chapel  and 
the  Backs,  and  the  curate,  addressing  himself  more 
particularly  to  Sibyl,  told  a  long  confused  story  il- 
lustrative of  his  disposition  to  reckless  devilry  (of  a 
pure-minded  kindly  sort)  about  upsetting  two  canoes 
quite  needlessly  on  the  way  to  Grantchester. 

I  can  still  see  Margaret  as  I  saw  her  that  afternoon, 
see  her  fresh  fair  face,  with  the  little  obliquity  of  the 
upper  lip,  and  her  brow  always  slightly  knitted,  and 
her  manner  as  of  one  breathlessly  shy  but  determined. 
She  had  rather  open  blue  eyes,  and  she  spoke  in  an 
even  musical  voice  with  the  gentlest  of  stresses  and  the 
ghost  of  a  lisp.  And  it  was  true,  she  gathered,  that 
Cambridge  still  existed.  "  I  went  to  Grantchester," 
she  said,  "  last  year,  and  had  tea  under  the  apple-blos- 
som. I  didn't  think  then  I  should  have  to  come  down." 
(It  was  that  started  the  curate  upon  his  anecdote.) 

"  I've  seen  a  lot  of  pictures,  and  learnt  a  lot  about 
them — at  the  Pitti  and  the  Brera, — the  Brera  is  won- 
derful— wonderful  places, — but  it  isn't  like  real  study," 
she  was  saying  presently.  ..."  We  bought  bales  of 
photographs,"  she  said. 

I  thought  the  bales  a  little  out  of  keeping. 

But  fair-haired  and  quite  simply  and  yet  graciously 
and  fancifully  dressed,  talking  of  art  and  beautiful 
things  and  a  beautiful  land,  and  with  so  much  manifest 
regret  for  learning  denied,  she  seemed  a  different  kind 


178      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

of  being  altogether  from  my  smart,  hard,  high-col- 
oured, black-haired  and  resolutely  hatted  cousin;  she 
seemed  translucent  beside  Gertrude.  Even  the  little 
twist  and  droop  of  her  slender  body  was  a  grace  to  me. 

I  liked  her  from  the  moment  I  saw  her,  and  set 
myself  to  interest  and  please  her  as  well  as  I  knew  how. 

We  recalled  a  case  of  ragging  that  had  rustled  the 
shrubs  of  Newnham,  and  then  Chris  Robinson's  visit — 
he  had  given  a  talk  to  Bennett  Hall  also — and  our 
impression  of  him. 

"He  disappointed  me,  too,"  said  Margaret. 

I  was  moved  to  tell  Margaret  something  of  my  own 
views  in  the  matter  of  social  progress,  and  she  listened 
— oh!  with  a  kind  of  urged  attention,  and  her  brow 
a  little  more  knitted,  very  earnestly.  The  little  curate 
desisted  from  the  appendices  and  refuse  heaps  and  gen- 
eral debris  of  his  story,  and  made  himself  look  very 
alert  and  intelligent. 

"We  did  a  lot  of  that  when  I  was  up  in  the  eight- 
ies," he  saidc  "  I'm  glad  Imperialism  hasn't  swamped 
you  fellows  altogether." 

Gertrude,  looking  bright  and  confident,  came  to  join 
our  talk  from  the  shrubbery;  the  initial,  a  little  flushed 
and  evidently  in  a  state  of  refreshed  relationship,  came 
with  her,  and  a  cheerful  lady  in  pink  and  more  par- 
ticularly distinguished  by  a  pink  bonnet  joined  our  lit- 
tle group.  Gertrude  had  been  sipping  admiration  and 
was  not  disposed  to  play  a  passive  part  in  the  talk. 

"  Socialism !  "  she  cried,  catching  the  word.  "  It's 
well  Pa  isn't  here.  He  has  Fits  when  people  talk  of 
socialism.  Fits !  " 

The  initial  laughed  in  a  general  kind  of  way. 

The  curate  said  there  was  socialism  and  socialism, 
and  looked  at  Margaret  to  gauge  whether  he  had  been 
too  bold  in  this  utterance.  But  she  was  all,  he  per- 
ceived, for  broad-mindness,  and  he  stirred  himself 


IN   STAFFORDSHIRE         179 

(and  incidentally  his  tea)  to  still  more  liberality  of  ex- 
pression. He  said  the  state  of  the  poor  was  appalling, 
simply  appalling;  that  there  were  times  when  he  wanted 
to  shatter  the  whole  system,  "  only,"  he  said,  turning 
to  me  appealingly,  "What  have  we  got  to  put  in  its 
place?  " 

"  The  thing  that  exists  is  always  the  more  evident 
alternative,"  I  said. 

The  little  curate  looked  at  it  for  a  moment.  "  Pre- 
cisely," he  said  explosively,  and  turned  stirring  and 
with  his  head  a  little  on  one  side,  to  hear  what  Mar- 
garet was  saying. 

Margaret  was  saying,  with  a  swift  blush  and  an  ef- 
fect of  daring,  that  she  had  no  doubt  she  was  a  socialist. 

"  And  wearing  a  gold  chain !  "  said  Gertrude,  "  And 
drinking  out  of  eggshell !  I  like  that !  " 

I  came  to  Margaret's  rescue.  "  It  doesn't  follow 
that  because  one's  a  socialist  one  ought  to  dress  in 
sackcloth  and  ashes.' 

The  initial  coloured  deeply,  and  having  secured  my 
attention  by  prodding  me  slightly  with  the  wrist  of 
the  hand  that  held  his  teacup,  cleared  his  throat  and 
suggested  that  "  one  ought  to  be  consistent." 

I  perceived  we  were  embarked  upon  a  discussion  of 
the  elements.  We  began  an  interesting  little  wrangle, 
one  of  those  crude  discussions  of  general  ideas  that 
are  dear  to  the  heart  of  youth.  I  and  Margaret  sup- 
ported one  another  as  socialists,  Gertrude  and  Sybil 
and  the  initial  maintained  an  anti-socialist  position,  the 
curate  attempted  a  cross-bench  position  with  an  air 
of  intending  to  come  down  upon  us  presently  with  a 
casting  vote.  He  reminded  us  of  a  number  of  useful 
principles  too  often  overlooked  in  argument,  that  in 
a  big  question  like  this  there  was  much  to  be  said  on 
both  sides,  that  if  every  one  did  his  or  her  duty  to 
every  one  about  them  there  would  be  no  difficulty  with 


180      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

social  problems  at  all,  that  over  and  above  all  enact- 
ments we  needed  moral  changes  in  people  themselves. 
My  cousin  Gertrude  was  a  difficult  controversialist  to 
manage,  being  unconscious  of  inconsistency  in  state- 
ment and  absolutely  impervious  to  reply.  Her  stand- 
point was  essentially  materialistic;  she  didn't  see  why 
she  shouldn't  have  a  good  time  because  other  people 
didn't;  they  would  have  a  good  time,  she  was  sure,  if 
she  didn't.  She  said  that  if  we  did  give  up  every- 
thing we  had  to  other  people,  they  wouldn't  very  likely 
know  what  to  do  with  it.  She  asked  if  we  were  so 
fond  of  work-people,  why  we  didn't  go  and  live  among 
them,  and  expressed  the  inflexible  persuasion  that  if 
we  had  socialism,  everything  would  be  just  the  same 
again  in  ten  years'  time.  She  also  threw  upon  us  the 
imputation  of  ingratitude  for  a  beautiful  world  by  say- 
ing that  so  far  as  she  was  concerned  she  didn't  want  to 
upset  everything.  She  was  contented  with  things  as 
they  were,  thank  you. 

The  discussion  led  in  some  way  that  I  don't  in  the 
least  recall  now,  and  possibly  by  abrupt  transitions,  to 
a  croquet  foursome  in  which  Margaret  involved  the 
curate  without  involving  herself,  and  then  stood  beside 
me  on  the  edge  of  the  lawn  while  the  others  played. 
We  watched  silently  for  a  moment. 

"  I  hate  that  sort  of  view,"  she  said  suddenly  in  a 
confidential  undertone,  with  her  delicate  pink  flush  re- 
turning. 

"  It's  want  of  imagination,"   I   said. 

"  To  think  we  are  just  to  enjoy  ourselves,"  she  went 
on;  "just  to  go  on  dressing  and  playing  and  having 
meals  and  spending  money ! "  She  seemed  to  be  re- 
ferring not  simply  to  my  cousins,  but  to  the  whole 
world  of  industry  and  property  about  us.  "  But  what 
is  one  to  do  ?  "  she  asked.  "  I  do  wish  I  had  not  had 
to  come  down.  It's  all  so  pointless  here.  There  seems 


IN   STAFFORDSHIRE          181 

to  be  nothing  going  forward,  no  ideas,  no  dreams.  No 
one  here  seems  to  feel  quite  what  I  feel,  the  sort  of  need 
there  is  for  meaning  in  things.  I  hate  things  without 
meaning." 

"  Don't  you  do — local  work?  " 

"  I  suppose  I  shall.  I  suppose  I  must  find  some- 
thing. Do  you  think — if  one  were  to  attempt  some 
sort  of  propaganda?  " 

"  Could  you ?  "  I  began  a  little  doubtfully. 

"  I  suppose  I  couldn't/'  she  answered,  after  a 
thoughtful  moment.  "  I  suppose  it  would  come  to 
nothing.  And  yet  I  feel  there  is  so  much  to  be  done 
for  the  world,  so  much  one  ought  to  be  doing.  ...  I 
want  to  do  something  for  the  world." 

I  can  see  her  now  as  she  stood  there  with  her  brows 
nearly  frowning,  her  blue  eyes  looking  before  her,  her 
mouth  almost  petulant.  "  One  feels  that  there  are  so 
many  things  going  on — out  of  one's  reach,"  she  said. 

I  went  back  in  the  motor-car  with  my  mind  full  of 
her,  the  quality  of  delicate  discontent,  the  suggestion 
of  exile.  Even  a  kind  of  weakness  in  her  was  sym- 
pathetic. She  told  tremendously  against  her  back- 
ground. She  was,  I  say,  like  a  protesting  blue  flower 
upon  a  cinder  heap.  It  is  curious,  too,  how  she  con- 
nects and  mingles  with  the  furious  quarrel  I  had  with 
my  uncle  that  very  evening.  That  came  absurdly.  In- 
directly Margaret  was  responsible.  My  mind  was  run- 
ning on  ideas  she  had  revived  and  questions  she  had  set 
clamouring,  and  quite  inadvertently  in  my  attempt  to 
find  solutions  I  talked  so  as  to  outrage  his  profound- 
est  feelings.  .  .  . 

§r 

What  a  preposterous  shindy  that  was ! 
I    sat  with   him    in   the    smoking-room,   propounding 
what    I    considered   to   be    the   most    indisputable    and 


182      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

non-contentious  propositions  conceivable — until,  to  my 
infinite  amazement,  he  exploded  and  called  me  a 
"  damned  young  puppy." 

It  was  seismic. 

"Tremendously  interesting  time/'  I  said,  "just  in 
the  beginning  of  making  a  civilisation." 

"  Ah !  "  he  said,  with  an  averted  face,  and  nodded, 
leaning  forward  over  his  cigar. 

I  had  not  the  remotest  thought  of  annoying  him. 

"Monstrous  muddle  of  things  we  have  got,"  I  said, 
"  jumbled  streets,  ugly  population,  ugly  factories " 

"  You'd  do  a  sight  better  if  you  had  to  do  with  it," 
said  my  uncle,  regarding  me  askance. 

"  Not  me.  But  a  world  that  had  a  collective  plan 
and  knew  where  it  meant  to  be  going  would  do  a  sight 
better,  anyhow.  We're  all  swimming  in  a  flood  of  ill- 
calculated  chances " 

"  You'll  be  making  out  I  organised  that  business 
down  there — by  chance — next,"  said  my  uncle,  his  voice 
thick  with  challenge. 

I  went  on  as  though  I  was  back  in  Trinity. 

"  There's  a  lot  of  chance  in  the  making  of  all  great 
businesses,"  I  said. 

My  uncle  remarked  that  that  showed  how  much  I 
knew  about  businesses.  If  chance  made  businesses, 
why  was  it  that  he  always  succeeded  and  grew  while 
those  fools  Ackroyd  and  Sons  always  took  second 
place?  He  showed  a  disposition  to  tell  the  glorious 
history  of  how  once  Ackroyd 's  overshadowed  him,  and 
how  now  he  could  buy  up  Ackroyd's  three  times  over. 
But  I  wanted  to  get  out  what  was  in  my  mind. 

"  Oh !  "  I  said,  "  as  between  man  and  man  and  busi- 
ness and  business,  some  of  course  get  the  pull  by  this 
quality  or  that — but  it's  forces  quite  outside  the  indi- 
vidual case  that  make  the  big  part  of  any  success  under 
modern  conditions.  You  never  invented  pottery,  nor 


STAFFORDSHIRE         183 

any  process  in  pottery  that  matters  a  rap  in  your  works ; 
it  wasn't  your  foresight  that  joined  all  England  up 
with  railways  and  made  it  possible  to  organise  produc- 
tion on  an  altogether  different  scale.  You  really  at 
the  utmost  can't  take  credit  for  much  more  than  being 
the  sort  of  man  who  happened  to  fit  what  happened  to 
be  the  requirements  of  the  time,  and  who  happened  to 
be  in  a  position  to  take  advantage  of  them " 

It  was  then  my  uncle  cried  out  and  called  me  a 
damned  young  puppy,  and  became  involved  in  some 
unexpected  trouble  of  his  own. 

I  woke  up  as  it  were  from  my  analysis  of  the  situ- 
ation to  discover  him  bent  over  a  splendid  spittoon, 
cursing  incoherently,  retching  a  little,  and  spitting  out 
the  end  of  his  cigar  which  he  had  bitten  off  in  his  last 
attempt  at  self-control,  and  withal  fully  prepared  as 
soon  as  he  had  cleared  for  action  to  give  me  just  all 
that  he  considered  to  be  the  contents  of  his  mind  upon 
the  condition  of  mine. 

Well,  why  shouldn't  I  talk  my  mind  to  him?  He'd 
never  had  an  outside  view  of  himself  for  years,  and  I 
resolved  to  stand  up  to  him.  We  went  at  it  hammer 
and  tongs !  It  became  clear  that  he  supposed  me  to 
be  a  Socialist,  a  zealous,  embittered  hater  of  all  own- 
ership— and  also  an  educated  man  of  the  vilest,  most 
pretentiously  superior  description.  His  principal 
grievance  was  that  I  thought  I  knew  everything;  to 
that  he  recurred  again  and  again.  .  .  . 

We  had  been  maintaining  an  armed  truce  with  each 
other  since  my  resolve  to  go  up  to  Cambridge,  and 
now  we  had  out  all  that  had  accumulated  between  us. 
There  had  been  stupendous  accumulations.  .  .  . 

The  particular  things  we  said  and  did  in  that  bawl- 
ing encounter  matter  nothing  at  all  in  this  story.  I 
can't  now  estimate  how  near  we  came  to  fisticuffs.  It 
ended  with  my  saying,  after  a  pungent  reminder  of 


184      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

benefits  conferred  and  remembered,  that  I  didn't  want 
to  stay  another  hour  in  his  house.  I  went  upstairs,  in  a 
state  of  puerile  fury,  to  pack  and  go  off  to  the  Rail- 
way Hotel,  while  he,  with  ironical  civility,  telephoned 
for  a  cab. 

"  Good  riddance ! "  shouted  my  uncle,  seeing  me  off 
into  the  night. 

On  the  face  of  it  our  row  was  preposterous,  but 
the  underlying  reality  of  our  quarrel  was  the  essential 
antagonism,  it  seemed  to  me,  in  all  human  affairs,  the 
antagonism  between  ideas  and  the  established  method, 
that  is  to  say,  between  ideas  and  the  rule  of  thumb. 
The  world  I  hate  is  the  rule-of-thumb  world,  the  thing 
I  and  my  kind  of  people  exist  for  primarily  is  to  battle 
with  that,  to  annoy  it,  disarrange  it,  reconstruct  it.  We 
question  everything,  disturb  anything  that  cannot  give 
a  clear  justification  to  our  questioning,  because  we  be- 
lieve inherently  that  our  sense  of  disorder  implies  the 
possibility  of  a  better  order.  Of  course  we  are  de- 
testable. My  uncle  was  of  that  other  vaster  mass  who 
accept  everything  for  the  thing  it  seems  to  be,  hate  en- 
quiry and  analysis  as  a  tramp  hates  washing,  dread  and 
resist  change,  oppose  experiment,  despise  science.  The 
world  is  our  battleground;  and  all  history,  all  litera- 
ture that  matters,  all  science,  deals  with  this  conflict  of 
the  thing  that  is  and  the  speculative  "if"  that  will 
destroy  it. 

But  that  is  why  I  did  not  see  Margaret  Seddon 
again  for  five  years. 


CHAPTER    THE     SECOND 

MARGARET    IN    LONDON 


I  WAS  twenty-seven  when  I  met  Margaret  again,  and 
the  intervening  five  years  had  been  years  of  vigorous 
activity  for  me,  if  not  of  very  remarkable  growth. 
When  I  saw  her  again,  I  could  count  myself  a  grown 
man.  I  think,  indeed,  I  counted  myself  more  com- 
pletely grown  than  I  was.  At  any  rate,  by  all  ordinary 
standards,  I  had  "  got  on "  very  well,  and  my  ideas, 
if  they  had  not  changed  very  greatly,  had  become 
much  more  definite  and  my  ambitions  clearer  and 
bolder. 

I  had  long  since  abandoned  my  fellowship  and  come 
to  London.  I  had  published  two  books  that  had  been 
talked  about,  written  several  articles,  and  established 
a  regular  relationship  with  the  Weekly  Review  and  the 
Evening  Gazette.  I  was  a  member  of  the  Eighty  Club 
and  learning  to  adapt  the  style  of  the  Cambridge  Union 
to  larger  uses.  The  London  world  had  opened  out  to 
me  very  readily.  I  had  developed  a  pleasant  variety 
of  social  connections.  I  had  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Mr.  Evesham,  who  had  been  attracted  by  my  New 
Ruler,  and  who  talked  about  it  and  me,  and  so  did  a 
very  great  deal  to  make  a  way  for  me  into  the  com- 
pany of  prominent  and  amusing  people.  I  dined  out 
quite  frequently.  The  glitter  and  interest  of  good  Lon- 
don dinner  parties  became  a  common  experience.  I 
liked  the  sort  of  conversation  one  got  at  them  extremely, 
the  little  glow  of  duologues  burning  up  into  more  gen- 

185 


186      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

eral  discussions,  the  closing-in  of  the  men  after  the 
going  of  the  women,  the  sage,  substantial  masculine 
gossiping,  the  later  resumption  of  effective  talk  with 
some  pleasant  woman,  graciously  at  her  best.  I  had 
a  wide  range  of  houses;  Cambridge  had  linked  me  to 
one  or  two  correlated  sets  of  artistic  and  literary  peo- 
ple, and  my  books  and  Mr.  Evesham  and  opened  to  me 
the  big  vague  world  of  "  society."  I  wasn't  aggres- 
sive nor  particularly  snobbish  nor  troublesome,  some- 
times I  talked  well,  and  if  I  had  nothing  interesting 
to  say  I  said  as  little  as  possible,  and  I  had  a  youthful 
gravity  of  manner  that  was  liked  by  hostesses.  And 
the  other  side  of  my  nature  that  first  flared  through 
the  cover  of  restraints  at  Locarno,  that  too  had  had 
opportunity  to  develop  along  the  line  London  renders 
practicable.  I  had  had  my  experiences  and  secrets  and 
adventures  among  that  fringe  of  ill-mated  or  erratic 
or  discredited  women  the  London  world  possesses.  The 
thing  had  long  ago  ceased  to  be  a  matter  of  magic  or 
mystery,  and  had  become  a  question  of  appetites  and 
excitement,  and  among  other  things  the  excitement  of 
not  being  found  out. 

I  write  rather  doubtfully  of  my  growing  during  this 
period.  Indeed  I  find  it  hard  to  judge  whether  I  can 
say  that  I  grew  at  all  in  any  real  sense  of  the  word, 
between  three  and  twenty  and  twenty-seven.  It  seems 
to  me  now  to  have  been  rather  a  phase  of  realisation 
and  clarification.  All  the  broad  lines  of  my  thought 
were  laid  down,  I  am  sure,  by  the  date  of  my  Locarno 
adventure,  but  in  those  five  years  I  discussed  things 
over  and  over  again  with  myself  and  others,  filled  out 
with  concrete  fact  forms  I  had  at  first  apprehended 
sketchily  and  conversationally,  measured  my  powers 
against  my  ideals  and  the  forces  in  the  world  about 
me.  It  was  evident  that  many  men  no  better  than  my- 
self and  with  no  greater  advantages  than  mine  had 


MARGARET     IN    LONDON       187 

raised  themselves  to  influential  and  even  decisive  posi- 
tions in  the  worlds  of  politics  and  thought.  I  was 
gathering  the  confidence  and  knowledge  necessary  to 
attack  the  world  in  the  large  manner;  I  found  I  could 
write,  and  that  people  would  let  me  write  if  I  chose,  as 
one  having  authority  and  not  as  the  scribes.  Socially 
and  politically  and  intellectually  I  knew  myself  for  an 
honest  man,  and  that  quite  without  any  deliberation 
on  my  part  this  showed  and  made  things  easy  for  me. 
People  trusted  my  good  faith  from  the  beginning — 
for  all  that  I  came  from  nowhere  and  had  no  better 
position  than  any  adventurer. 

But  the  growth  process  was  arrested,  I  was  nothing 
bigger  at  twenty-seven  than  at  twenty-two,  however 
much  saner  and  stronger,  and  any  one  looking  closely 
into  my  mind  during  that  period  might  well  have 
imagined  growth  finished  altogether.  It  is  particularly 
evident  to  me  now  that  I  came  no  nearer  to  any  under- 
standing of  women  during  that  time.  That  Locarno 
affair  was  infinitely  more  to  me  than  I  had  supposed. 
It  ended  something — nipped  something  in  the  bad  per- 
haps— took  me  at  a  stride  from  a  vague,  fine,  ignorant, 
closed  world  of  emotion  to  intrigue  and  a  perfectly 
definite  and  limited  sensuality.  It  ended  my  youth, 
and  for  a  time  it  prevented  my  manhood.  I  had  never 
yet  even  peeped  at  the  sweetest,  profoundest  thing  in 
the  world,  the  heart  and  meaning  of  a  girl,  or  dreamt 
with  any  quality  of  reality  of  a  wife  or  any  such  thing 
as  a  friend  among  womanhood.  My  vague  anticipa- 
tion of  such  things  in  life  had  vanished  altogether.  I 
turned  away  from  their  possibility.  It  seemed  to  me 
I  knew  what  had  to  be  known  about  womankind.  I 
wanted  to  work  hard,  to  get  on  to  a  position  in  which 
I  could  develop  and  forward  my  constructive  projects. 
Women,  I  thought,  had  nothing  to  do  with  that.  It 
seemed  clear  I  could  not  marry  for  some  years;  I  was 


188       THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

attractive  to  certain  types  of  women,  I  had  vanity 
enough  to  give  me  an  agreeable  confidence  in  love- 
making,  and  I  went  about  seeking  a  convenient  mistress 
quite  deliberately,  some  one  who  should  serve  my  pur- 
pose and  say  in  the  end,  like  that  kindly  first  mistress 
of  mine,  "  I've  done  you  no  harm/'  and  so  release  me. 
It  seemed  the  only  wise  way  of  disposing  of  urgencies 
that  might  otherwise  entangle  and  wreck  the  career 
I  was  intent  upon. 

I  don't  apologise  for,  or  defend  my  mental  and  moral 
phases.  So  it  was  I  appraised  life  and  prepared  to 
take  it,  and  so  it  is  a  thousand  ambitious  men  see  it 
to-day. 

For  the  rest  these  five  years  were  a  period  of  defini- 
tion. My  political  conceptions  were  perfectly  plain 
and  honest.  I  had  one  constant  desire  ruling  my 
thoughts.  I  meant  to  leave  England  and  the  empire 
better  ordered  than  I  found  it,  to  organise  and  disci- 
pline, to  build  up  a  constructive  and  controlling  State 
out  of  my  world's  confusions.  We  had,  I  saw,  to  suf- 
fuse education  with  public  intention,  to  develop  a  new 
better-living  generation  with  a  collectivist  habit  of 
thought,  to  link  now  chaotic  activities  in  every  human 
affair,  and  particularly  to  catch  that  escaped,  world- 
making,  world-ruining,  dangerous  thing,  industrial  and 
financial  enterprise,  and  bring  it  back  to  the  service 
of  the  general  good.  I  had  then  the  precise  image 
that  still  serves  me  as  a  symbol  for  all  I  wish  to  bring 
about,  the  image  of  an  engineer  building  a  lock  in  a 
swelling  torrent — with  water  pressure  as  his  only 
source  of  power.  My  thoughts  and  acts  were  habitu- 
ally turned  to  that  enterprise;  it  gave  shape  and  di- 
rection to  all  my  life.  The  problem  that  most  en- 
gaged my  mind  during  those  years  was  the  practical 
and  personal  problem  of  just  where  to  apply  myself 
to  serve  this  almost  innate  purpose.  How  was  I,  a 


MARGARET    IN    LONDON       189 

child  of  this  confusion,  struggling  upward  through  the 
confusion,  to  take  hold  of  things?  Somewhere  be- 
tween politics  and  literature  my  grip  must  needs  be 
found,  but  where?  Always  I  seem  to  have  been  look- 
ing for  that  in  those  opening  years,  and  disregarding 
everything  else  to  diccover  it. 

§  2 

The  Baileys,  under  whose  auspices  I  met  Margaret 
again,  were  in  the  sharpest  contrast  with  the  narrow 
industrialism  of  the  Staffordshire  world.  They  were 
indeed  at  the  other  extreme  of  the  scale,  two  active 
self-centred  people,  excessively  devoted  to  the  public 
service.  It  was  natural  I  should  gravitate  to  them,  for 
they  seemed  to  stand  for  the  maturer,  more  disciplined, 
better  informed  expression  of  all  I  was  then  urgent  to 
attempt  to  do.  The  bulk  of  their  friends  were  poli- 
ticians or  public  officials,  they  described  themselves  as 
publicists — a  vague  yet  sufficiently  significant  term. 
They  lived  and  worked  in  a  hard  little  house  in  Cham- 
bers Street,  Westminster,  and  made  a  centre  for  quite 
an  astonishing  amount  of  political  and  social  activity. 

Willersley  took  me  there  one  evening.  The  place 
was  almost  pretentiously  matter-of-fact  and  unassum- 
ing. The  narrow  passage-hall,  papered  with  some 
ancient  yellowish  paper,  grained  to  imitate  wood,  was 
choked  with  hats  and  cloaks  and  an  occasional  femi- 
nine wrap.  Motioned  rather  than  announced  by  a  tall 
Scotch  servant  woman,  the  only  domestic  I  ever  remem- 
ber seeing  there,  we  made  our  way  up  a  narrow  stair- 
case past  the  open  door  of  a  small  study  packed  with 
blue-books,  to  discover  Altiora  Bailey  receiving  before 
the  fireplace  in  her  drawing-room  She  was  a  tall 
commanding  figure,  splendid  but  a  little  untidy  in  black 
silk  and  red  beads,  with  dark  eyes  that  had  no  depths, 
with  a  clear  hard  voice  that  had  an  almost  visible  promi- 


190      THE  NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

nence,  aquiline  features  and  straight  black  hair  that 
was  apt  to  get  astray,  that  was  now  astray  like  the 
head  feathers  of  an  eagle  in  a  gale.  She  stood  with 
her  hands  behind  her  back,  and  talked  in  a  high  tenor 
of  a  projected  Town  Planning  Bill  with  Blupp,  who 
was  practically  in  those  days  the  secretary  of  the  local 
Government  Board.  A  very  short  broad  man  with 
thick  ears  and  fat  white  hands  writhing  intertwined 
behind  him,  stood  with  his  back  to  us,  eager  to  bark 
interruptions  into  Altiora's  discourse.  A  slender  girl 
in  pale  blue,  manifestly  a  young  political  wife,  stood 
with  one  foot  on  the  fender  listening  with  an  expres- 
sion of  entirely  puzzled  propitiation.  A  tall  sandy- 
bearded  bishop  with  the  expression  of  a  man  in  a  trance 
completed  this  central  group. 

The  room  was  one  of  those  long  apartments  once 
divided  by  folding  doors,  and  reaching  from  back  to 
front,  that  are  common  upon  the  first  floors  of  London 
houses.  Its  walls  were  hung  with  two  or  three  indif- 
ferent water  colours,  there  was  scarcely  any  furniture 
but  a  sofa  or  so  and  a  chair,  and  the  floor,  severely 
carpeted  with  matting,  was  crowded  with  a  curious 
medley  of  people,  men  predominating.  Several  were 
in  evening  dress,  but  most  had  the  morning  garb  of 
the  politician;  the  women  were  either  severely  rational 
or  radiantly  magnificent.  Willersley  pointed  out  to 
me  the  wife  of  the  Secretary  of  State  for  War,  and  I 
recognised  the  Duchess  of  Clynes,  who  at  that  time 
cultivated  intellectuality.  I  looked  round,  identifying 
a  face  here  or  there,  and  stepping  back  trod  on  some 
one's  toe,  and  turned  to  find  it  belonged  to  the  Right 
Hon.  G.  B.  Mottisham,  dear  to  the  Punch  caricaturists. 
He  received  my  apology  with  that  intentional  charm 
that  is  one  of  his  most  delightful  traits,  and  resumed 
his  discussion.  Beside  him  was  Esmeer  of  Trinity, 
vhom  I  had  not  seen  since  my  Cambridge  days.  .  . 


MARGARET   IN   LONDON        191 

Willersley  found  an  ex-member  of  the  School  Board 
for  whom  he  had  affinities,  and  left  me  to  exchange 
experiences  and  comments  upon  the  company  with  Es- 
meer.  Esmeer  was  still  a  don;  but  he  was  nibbling, 
he  said,  at  certain  negotiations  with  the  Times  that 
might  bring  him  down  to  London.  He  wanted  to  come 
te  London.  "We  peep  at  things  from  Cambridge/' 
he  said. 

"  This  sort  of  thing/'  I  said,  "  makes  London  nec- 
essary. It's  the  oddest  gathering." 

"  Every  one  comes  here,"  said  Esmeer.  <c  Mostly 
we  hate  them  like  poison — jealousy — and  little  irrita- 
tions— Altiora  can  be  a  horror  at  times — but  we  have 
to  come." 

"  Things  are  being  done  ?  " 

"Oh! — no  doubt  of  it.  It's  one  of  the  parts  of  the 
British  machinery — that  doesn't  show....  But  no- 
body else  could  do  it. 

"  Two  people,"  said  Esmeer,  "  who've  planned  to  be 
a  power — in  an  original  way.  And  by  Jove!  they've 
done  it!" 

I  did  not  for  some  time  pick  out  Oscar  Bailey,  and 
then  Esmeer  showed  him  to  me  in  elaborately  con- 
fidential talk  in  a  corner  with  a  distinguished-looking 
stranger  wearing  a  ribbon.  Oscar  had  none  of  the  fine 
appearance  of  his  wife;  he  was  a  short  sturdy  figure 
with  a  rounded  protruding  abdomen  and  a  curious 
broad,  flattened,  clean-shaven  face  that  seemed  nearly 
all  forehead.  He  was  of  Anglo-Hungarian  extraction, 
and  I  have  always  fancied  something  Mongolian  in  his 
type.  He  peered  up  with  reddish  swollen-looking  eyes 
over  gilt-edged  glasses  that  were  divided  horizontally 
into  portions  of  different  refractive  power,  and  he 
talking  in  an  ingratiating  undertone,  with  busy  thin 
lips,  an  eager  lisp  and  nervous  movements  of  the  hand. 

People   say   that   thirty   years   before   at   Oxford   he 


192       THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

was  almost  exactly  the  same  eager,  clever  little  man  he 
was  when  I  first  met  him.  He  had  come  up  to  Balliol 
bristling  with  extraordinary  degrees  and  prizes  cap- 
turned  in  provincial  and  Irish  and  Scotch  universities — 
and  had  made  a  name  for  himself  as  the  most  formid- 
able dealer  in  exact  fact  the  rhetoricians  of  the  Union 
had  ever  had  to  encounter.  From  Oxford  he  had  gone  on 
to  a  position  in  the  Higher  Division  of  the  Civil  Serv- 
ice, I  think  in  the  War  Office,  and  had  speedily  made 
a  place  for  himself  as  a  political  journalist.  He  was 
a  particularly  neat  controversialist,  and  very  full  of 
political  and  sociological  ideas.  He  had  a  quite  as- 
tounding memory  for  facts  and  a  mastery  of  detailed 
analysis,  and  the  time  afforded  scope  for  these  gifts. 
The  later  eighties  were  full  of  politico-social  discussion, 
and  he  became  a  prominent  name  upon  the  contents 
list  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  the  Fortnightly  and 
Contemporary  chiefly  as  a  half  sympathetic  but  fre- 
quently very  damaging  critic  of  the  socialism  of  that 
period.  He  won  the  immense  respect  of  every  one 
specially  interested  in  social  and  political  questions,  he 
soon  achieved  the  limited  distinction  that  is  awarded 
such  capacity,  and  at  that  I  think  he  would  have  re- 
mained for  the  rest  of  his  life  if  he  had  not  encountered 
Altiora. 

But  Altiora  Macvitie  was  an  altogether  exceptional 
woman,  an  extraordinary  mixture  of  qualities,  the  one 
woman  in  the  world  who  could  make  something  more 
out  of  Bailey  than  that.  She  had  much  of  the  vigour 
and  handsomeness  of  a  slender  impudent  young  man, 
and  an  unscrupulousness  altogether  feminine.  She  was 
one  of  those  women  who  are  wanting  in — what  is  the 
word? — muliebrity.  She  had  courage  and  initiative 
and  a  philosophical  way  of  handling  questions,  and  she 
could  be  bored  by  regular  work  like  a  man.  She  was 
entirely  unfitted  for  her  sex's  sphere.  She  was  neither 


MARGARET   IN   LONDON       193 

uncertain,  coy  nor  hard  to  please,  and  altogether  too 
stimulating  and  aggressive  for  any  gentleman's  hours 
of  ease.  Her  cookery  would  have  been  about  as 
sketchy  as  her  handwriting,  which  was  generally  quite 
illegible,  and  she  would  have  made,  I  feel  sure,  a  shock- 
ing bad  nurse.  Yet  you  mustn't  imagine  she  was  an 
inelegant  or  unbeautiful  woman,  and  she  is  inconceiv- 
able to  me  in  high  collars  or  any  sort  of  masculine 
garment.  But  her  soul  was  bony,  and  at  the  base  of 
her  was  a  vanity  gaunt  and  greedy!  When  she  wasn't 
in  a  state  of  personal  untidiness  that  was  partly  a  pro- 
test against  the  waste  of  hours  exacted  by  the  toilet 
and  partly  a  natural  disinclination,  she  had  a  gypsy 
splendour  of  black  and  red  and  silver  all  her  own.  And 
somewhen  in  the  early  nineties  she  met  and  married 
Bailey. 

I  know  very  little  about  her  early  years.  She  was 
the  only  daughter  of  Sir  Deighton  Macvitie,  who  ap- 
plied the  iodoform  process  to  cotton,  and  only  his  sub- 
sequent unfortunate  attempts  to  become  a  Cotton  King 
prevented  her  being  a  very  rich  woman.  As  it  was  she 
had  a  tolerable  independence.  She  came  into  promi- 
nence as  one  of  the  more  able  of  the  little  shoal  of 
young  women  who  were  led  into  politico-philanthropic 
activities  by  the  influence  of  the  earlier  novels  of  Mrs. 
Humphry  Ward — the  Marcella  crop.  She  went 
"  slumming  "  with  distinguished  vigour,  which  was  quite 
usual  in  those  days — and  returned  from  her  experiences 
as  an  amateur  flower  girl  with  clear  and  original  views 
about  the  problem — which  is  and  always  had  been  un- 
usual. She  had  not  married,  I  suppose  because  her 
standards  were  high,  and  men  are  cowards  and  with  an 
instinctive  appetite  for  muliebrity.  She  had  kept  house 
for  her  father  by  speaking  occasionally  to  the  house- 
keeper, butler  and  cook  her  mother  had  left  her,  and 
gathering  the  most  interesting  dinner  parties  she  could, 


194       THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

and  had  married  off  four  orphan  nieces  in  a  harsh  and 
successful  manner.  After  her  father's  smash  and 
death  she  came  out  as  a  writer  upon  social  questions 
and  a  scathing  critic  of  the  Charity  Organisation  Soci- 
ety, and  she  was  three  and  thirty  and  a  little  at  loose 
ends  when  she  met  Oscar  Bailey,  so  to  speak,  in  the 
Contemporary  Review.  The  lurking  woman  in  her  na- 
ture was  fascinated  by  the  ease  and  precision  with 
which  the  little  man  rolled  over  all  sorts  of  important 
and  authoritative  people,  she  was  the  first  to  discover 
a  sort  of  imaginative  bigness  in  his  still  growing  mind, 
the  forehead  perhaps  carried  him  off  physically,  and 
she  took  occasion  to  meet  and  subjugate  him,,  and,  so 
soon  as  he  had  sufficiently  recovered  from  his  abject 
humility  and  a  certain  panic  at  her  attentions,  marry 
him. 

This  had  opened  a  new  phase  in  the  lives  of  Bailey 
and  herself.  The  two  supplemented  each  other  to  an 
extraordinary  extent.  Their  subsequent  career  was,  I 
think,  almost  entirely  her  invention.  She  was  aggres- 
sive, imaginative,  and  had  a  great  capacity  for  ideas, 
while  he  was  almost  destitute  of  initiative,  and  could 
do  nothing  with  ideas  except  remember  and  discuss 
them.  She  was,  if  not  exact,  at  least  indolent,  with 
a  strong  disposition  to  save  energy  by  sketching — even 
her  handwriting  showed  that — while  he  was  inexhaust- 
ibly industrious  with  a  relentless  invariable  caligraphy 
that  grew  larger  and  clearer  as  the  years  passed  by. 
She  had  a  considerable  power  of  charming;  she  could 
be  just  as  nice  to  people — and  incidentally  just  as 
nasty — as  she  wanted  to  be.  He  was  always  just  the 
same,  a  little  confidential  and  sotto  voce,  artlessly  rude 
and  egoistic  in  an  undignified  way.  She  had  consid- 
erable social  experience,  good  social  connections,  and 
considerable  social  ambition,  while  he  had  none  of  these 
things.  She  saw  in  a  flash  her  opportunity  to  redeem 


MARGARET    IN    LONDON      195 

his  defects,  use  his  powers,  and  do  large,  novel,  rather 
startling  things.  She  ran  him.  Her  marriage,  which 
shocked  her  friends  and  relations  beyond  measure — 
for  a  time  they  would  only  speak  of  Bailey  as  "  that 
gnome " — was  a  stroke  of  genius,  and  forthwith  they 
proceeded  to  make  themselves  the  most  formidable  and 
distinguished  couple  conceivable.  P.  B.  P.,  she  boasted, 
was  engraved  inside  their  wedding  rings,  Pro  Bono 
Publico,  and  she  meant  it  to  be  no  idle  threat.  She 
had  discovered  very  early  that  the  last  thing  influential 
people  will  do  is  to  work.  Everything  in  their  lives 
tends  to  make  them  dependent  upon  a  supply  of  con- 
fidently administered  detail.  Their  business  is  with  the 
window  and  not  the  stock  behind,  and  in  the  end  they 
are  dependent  upon  the  stock  behind  for  what  goes 
into  the  window.  She  linked  with  that  the  fact  that 
Bailey  had  a  mind  as  orderly  as  a  museum,  and  an  in- 
vincible power  over  detail.  She  saw  that  if  two  peo- 
ple took  the  necessary  pains  to  know  the  facts  of  gov^ 
ernment  and  administration  with  precision,  to  gather 
together  knowledge  that  was  dispersed  and  confused, 
to  be  able  to  say  precisely  what  had  to  be  done  and 
what  avoided  in  this  eventuality  or  that,  they  would 
necessarily  become  a  centre  of  reference  for  all  sorts 
of  legislative  proposals  and  political  expedients,  and 
she  went  unhesitatingly  upon  that. 

Bailey,  under  her  vigorous  direction,  threw  up  his 
post  in  the  Civil  Service  and  abandoned  sporadic  con- 
troversies, and  they  devoted  themselves  to  the  elabora- 
tion and  realisation  of  this  centre  of  public  informa- 
tion she  had  conceived  as  their  role.  They  set  out  to 
study  the  methods  and  organisation  and  realities  of 
government  in  the  most  elaborate  manner.  They  did 
the  work  as  no  one  had  ever  hitherto  dreamt  of  doing 
it.  They  planned  the  research  on  a  thoroughly  satis- 
fying scale,  and  arranged  their  lives  almost  entirely 


196       THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

for  it.  They  took  that  house  in  Chambers  Street  and 
furnished  it  with  severe  economy,  they  discovered  that 
Scotch  domestic  who  is  destined  to  be  the  guardian  and 
tyrant  of  their  declining  years,  and  they  set  to  work. 
Their  first  book,  "  The  Permanent  Official,"  fills  three 
plump  volumes,  and  took  them  and  their  two  secretaries 
upwards  of  four  years  to  do.  It  is  an  amazingly  good 
book,  an  enduring  achievement.  In  a  hundred  direc- 
tions the  history  and  the  administrative  treatment  of 
the  public  service  was  clarified  for  all  time.  .  .  . 

They  worked  regularly  every  morning  from  nine  to 
twelve,  they  lunched  lightly  but  severely,  in  the  after- 
noon they  "took  exercise"  or  Bailey  attended  meet- 
ings of  the  London  School  Board,  on  which  he  served, 
he  said,  for  the  purposes  of  study — he  also  became  a 
railway  director  for  the  same  end.  In  the  late  after- 
noon Altiora  was  at  home  to  various  callers,  and  in  the 
evening  came  dinner  or  a  reception  or  both. 

Her  dinners  and  gatherings  were  a  very  important 
feature  in  their  scheme.  She  got  together  all  sorts  of 
interesting  people  in  or  about  the  public  service,  she 
mixed  the  obscurely  efficient  with  the  ill-instructed 
famous  and  the  rudderless  rich,  got  together  in  one  room 
more  of  the  factors  in  our  strange  jumble  of  a 
public  life  than  had  ever  met  easily  before.  She  fed 
them  with  a  shameless  austerity  that  kept  the  con- 
versation brilliant,  on  a  soup,  a  plain  fish,  and  mutton 
or  boiled  fowl  and  milk  pudding,  with  nothing  to  drink 
but  whisky  and  soda,  and  hot  and  cold  water,  and  milk 
and  lemonade.  Everybody  was  soon  very  glad  indeed 
to  come  to  that.  She  boasted  how  little  her  house- 
keeping cost  her,  and  sought  constantly  for  fresh 
economies  that  would  enable  her,  she  said,  to  sustain 
an  additional  private  secretary.  Secretaries  were  the 
Baileys'  one  extravagance,  they  loved  to  think  of 
searches  going  on  in  the  British  Museum,  and  letters 


MARGARET    IN    LONDON      197 

being  cleared  up  and  precis  made  overhead,  while  they 
sat  in  the  little  study  and  worked  together,  Bailey  with 
a  clockwork  industry,  and  Altiora  in  splendid  flashes 
between  intervals  of  cigarettes  and  meditation.  "  All 
efficient  public  careers,"  said  Altiora,  "  consist  in  the 
proper  direction  of  secretaries." 

"  If  everything  goes  well  I  shall  have  another  secre- 
tary next  year,"  Altiora  told  me.  "  I  wish  I  could 
refuse  people  dinner  napkins.  Imagine  what  it  means 
in  washing!  I  dare  most  things.  .  .  .  But  as  it  is, 
they  stand  a  lot  of  hardship  here." 

"  There's  something  of  the  miser  in  both  these 
people,"  said  Esmeer,  and  the  thing  was  perfectly  true. 
For,  after  all,  the  miser  is  nothing  more  than  a  man 
who  either  through  want  of  imagination  or  want  of 
suggestion  misapplies  to  a  base  use  a  natural  power  of 
concentration  upon  one  end.  The  concentration  itself 
is  neither  good  nor  evil,  but  a  power  that  can  be  used 
in  either  way.  And  the  Baileys  gathered  and  rein- 
vested usuriously  not  money,  but  knowledge  of  the 
utmost  value  in  human  affairs.  They  produced  an 
effect  of  having  found  themselves  —  completely.  One 
envied  them  at  times  extraordinarily.  I  was  attracted, 
I  was  dazzled  —  and  at  the  same  time  there  was  some- 
thing about  Bailey's  big  wrinkled  forehead,  his  lisping 
broad  mouth,  the  gestures  of  his  hands  and  an  uncivil 
preoccupation  I  could  not  endure.  .  .  . 


Their  effect  upon  me  was  from  the  outset  very  con- 
siderable. 

Both  of  them  found  occasion  on  that  first  visit  of 
mine  to  talk  to  me  about  my  published  writings  and 
particularly  about  my  then  just  published  book  The 
New  Ruler,  which  had  interested  them  very  much.  It 


198      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

fell  in  indeed  so  closely  with  their  own  way  of  thinking 
that  I  doubt  if  they  ever  understood  how  independently 
I  had  arrived  at  my  conclusions.  It  was  their  weakness 
to  claim  excessively.  That  irritation,  however,  came 
later.  We  discovered  each  other  immensely;  for  a  time 
it  produced  a  tremendous  sense  of  kindred  and  co- 
operation. 

Altiora,  I  remember,  maintained  that  there  existed 
a  great  army  of  such  constructive-minded  people  as 
ourselves — as  yet  undiscovered  by  one  another. 

"  It's  like  boring  a  tunnel  through  a  mountain,"  said 
Oscar,  "  and  presently  hearing  the  tapping  of  the 
workers  from  the  other  end." 

"If  you  didn't  know  of  them  beforehand,"  I  said, 
"it  might  be  a  rather  badly  joined  tunnel." 

"  Exactly,"  said  Altiora  with  a  high  note,  "  and 
that's  why  we  all  want  to  find  out  each  other.  .  .  ." 

They  didn't  talk  like  that  on  our  first  encounter,  but 
they  urged  me  to  lunch  with  them  next  day,  and  then 
it  was  we  went  into  things.  A  woman  Factory  In- 
spector and  the  Educational  Minister  for  New  Banks- 
land  and  his  wife  were  also  there,  but  I  don't  remember 
they  made  any  contribution  to  the  conversation.  The 
Baileys  saw  to  that.  They  kept  on  at  me  in  an  urgent 
litigious  way. 

"We  have  read  your  book,"  each  began — a§  though 
it  had  been  a  joint  function.  "And  we  consider " 

"  Yes,"  I  protested,  "  I  think " 

That  was  a  secondary  matter. 

"  They  did  not  consider,"  said  Altiora,  raising  her 
voice  and  going  right  over  me,  that  I  had  allowed 
sufficiently  for  the  inevitable  development  of  an 
official  administrative  class  in  the  modern  state." 

"  Nor  of  its  importance,"  echoed  Oscar. 

That,  they  explained  in  a  sort  of  chorus,  was  the 
cardinal  idea  of  their  lives,  what  they  were  up  to,  what 


MARGARET    IN    LONDON      199 

they  stood  for.  "We  want  to  suggest  to  you,"  they 
said — and  I  found  this  was  a  stock  opening  of  theirs — 
"that  from  the  mere  necessities  of  convenience  elected 
bodies  must  avail  themselves  more  and  more  of  the 
services  of  expert  officials.  We  have  that  very  much  in 
mind.  The  more  complicated  and  technical  affairs  be- 
come, the  less  confidence  will  the  elected  official  have 
in  himself.  We  want  to  suggest  that  these  expert 
officials  must  necessarily  develop  into  a  new  class  and  a 
very  powerful  class  in  the  community.  We  want  to 
organise  that.  It  may  be  the  power  of  the  future.  They 
will  necessarily  have  to  have  very  much  of  a  common 
training.  We  consider  ourselves  as  amateur  unpaid 
precursors  of  such  a  class."  .  .  . 

The  vision  they  displayed  for  my  consideration  as 
the  aim  of  public-spirited  endeavour,  seemed  like  a 
harder,  narrower,  more  specialised  version  of  the  idea 
of  a  trained  and  disciplined  state  that  Willersley  and  I 
had  worked  out  in  the  Alps.  They  wanted  things 
more  organised,  more  correlated  with  government  and 
a  collective  purpose,  just  as  we  did,  but  they  saw  it  not 
in  terms  of  a  growing  collective  understanding,  but  in 
terms  of  functionaries,  legislative  change,  and  methods 
of  administration.  .  .  . 

It  wasn't  clear  at  first  how  we  differed.  The  Baileys 
were  very  anxious  to  win  me  to  co-operation,  and  I 
was  quite  prepared  at  first  to  identify  their  distinctive 
expressions  with  phrases  of  my  own,  and  so  we  came 
very  readily  into  an  alliance  that  was  to  last  some 
years,  and  break  at  last  very  painfully.  Altiora  mani- 
festly liked  me,  I  was  soon  discussing  with  her  the  per- 
plexity I  found  in  placing  myself  efficiently  in  the 
world,  the  problem  of  how  to  take  hold  of  things  that 
occupied  my  thoughts,  and  she  was  sketching  out 
careers  for  my  consideration,  very  much  as  an  architect 
on  his  first  visit  sketches  houses,  considers  require- 


200      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

ments,  and  puts  before  you  this  example  and  that  of  the 
more  yr  less  similar  thing  already  done.  .  .  . 

§   * 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  much  in  common  there  was 
between  the  Baileys  and  me,  and  how  natural  it  was 
that  I  should  become  a  constant  visitor  at  their  house 
and  an  ally  of  theirs  in  many  enterprises.  It  is  not 
nearly  so  easy  to  define  the  profound  antagonism  of 
spirit  that  also  held  between  us.  There  was  a  differ- 
ence in  texture,  a  difference  in  quality.  How  can  I 
express  it?  The  shapes  of  our  thoughts  were  the  same, 
but  the  substance  quite  different.  It  was  as  if  they  had 
made  in  china  or  cast  iron  what  I  had  made  in  trans- 
parent living  matter.  (The  comparison  is  manifestly 
from  my  point  of  view.)  Certain  things  never  seemed 
to  show  through  their  ideas  that  were  visible,  refracted 
perhaps  and  distorted,  but  visible  always  through 
mine. 

I  thought  for  a  time  the  essential  difference  lay  in 
our  relation  to  beauty.  With  me  beauty  is  quite 
primary  in  life;  I  like  truth,  order  and  goodness, 
wholly  because  they  are  beautiful  or  lead  straight  to 
beautiful  consequences.  The  Baileys  either  hadn't  got 
that  or  they  didn't  see  it.  They  seemed  at  times  to 
prefer  things  harsh  and  ugly.  That  puzzled  me 
extremely.  The  aesthetic  quality  of  many  of  their  pro- 
posals, the  "  manners  "  of  their  work,  so  to  speak,  were 
at  times  as  dreadful  as — well,  War  Office  barrack 
architecture.  A  caricature  by  its  exaggerated  state- 
ments will  sometimes  serve  to  point  a  truth  by  antago- 
nising falsity  and  falsity.  I  remember  talking  to  a 
prominent  museum  official  in  need  of  more  public  funds 
for  the  work  he  had  in  hand.  I  mentioned  the  possi- 
bility of  enlisting  Bailey's  influence. 


MARGARET    IN    LONDON      201 

"Oh,  we  don't  want  Philistines  like  that  infernal 
Bottle-Imp  running  us,"  he  said  hastily,  and  would 
hear  of  no  concerted  action  for  the  end  he  had  in  view. 
"  I'd  rather  not  have  the  extension. 

"  You  see/'  he  went  on  to  explain,  "  Bailey's  want- 
ing in  the  essentials." 

"What  essentials?"  said  I. 

"  Oh !  he'd  be  like  a  nasty  oily  efficient  little  machine 
for  some  merely  subordinate  necessity  among  all  my 
delicate  stuff.  He'd  do  all  we  wanted  no  doubt  in  the 
way  of  money  and  powers — and  he'd  do  it  wrong  and 
mess  the  place  for  ever.  Hands  all  black,  you  know. 
He's  just  a  means.  Just  a  very  aggressive  and  un- 
manageable means.  This  isn't  a  plumber's  job.  .  .  ." 

I  stuck  to  my  argument. 

"  I  don't  like  him,"  said  the  official  conclusively,  and 
it  seemed  to  me  at  the  time  he  was  just  blind  preju- 
dice speaking.  .  .  . 

I  came  nearer  the  truth  of  the  matter  as  I  came 
to  realise  that  our  philosophies  differed  profoundly. 
That  isn't  a  very  curable  difference, — once  people  have 
grown  up.  Theirs  was  a  philosophy  devoid  of  finesse. 
Temperamentally  the  Baileys  were  specialised,  con- 
centrated, accurate,  while  I  am  urged  either  by  some 
inner  force  or  some  entirely  assimilated  influence  in 
my  training,  always  to  round  off  and  shadow  my  out- 
lines. I  hate  them  hard.  I  would  sacrifice  detail  to 
modelling  always,  and  the  Baileys,  it  seemed  to  me, 
loved  a  world  as  flat  and  metallic  as  Sidney  Cooper's 
cows.  If  they  had  the  universe  in  hand  I  know  they 
would  take  down  all  the  trees  and  put  up  stamped 
tin  green  shades  and  sunlight  accumulators.  Altiora 
thought  trees  hopelessly  irregular  and  sea  cliffs  a  great 
mistake.  ...  I  got  things  clearer  as  time  went  on. 
Though  it  was  an  Hegelian  mess  of  which  I  had  par- 
taken at  Codger's  table  by  way  of  a  philosophical  train- 


202      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

ing,  my  sympathies  have  always  been  Pragmatist.  I 
belong  almost  by  nature  to  that  school  of  Pragma- 
tism that,  following  the  mediaeval  Nominalists,  bases 
itself  upon  a  denial  of  the  reality  of  classes,  and  of  the 
validity  of  general  laws.  The  Baileys  classified  every- 
thing. They  were,  in  the  scholastic  sense — which  so 
oddly  contradicts  the  modern  use  of  the  word — 
"  Realists."  They  believed  classes  were  real  and  inde- 
pendent of  their  individuals.  This  is  the  common 
habit  of  all  so-called  educated  people  who  have  no 
metaphysical  aptitude  and  no  metaphysical  training. 
It  leads  them  to  a  progressive  misunderstanding  of  the 
world.  It  was  a  favourite  trick  of  Altiora's  to  speak 
of  everybody  as  a  "  type " ;  she  saw  men  as  samples 
moving;  her  dining-room  became  a  chamber  of  repre- 
sentatives. It  gave  a  tremendously  scientific  air  to 
many  of  their  generalisations,  using  "  scientific  "  in  its 
nineteenth-century  uncritical  Herbert  Spencer  sense, 
an  air  that  only  began  to  disappear  when  you  thought 
them  over  again  in  terms  of  actuality  and  the  people 
one  knew.  .  .  . 

At  the  Baileys'  one  always  seemed  to  be  getting 
one's  hands  on  the  very  strings  that  guided  the  world. 
You  heard  legislation  projected  to  affect  this  "type" 
and  that;  statistics  marched  by  you  with  sin  and 
shame  and  injustice  and  misery  reduced  to  quite 
manageable  percentages,  you  found  men  who  were  to 
frame  or  amend  bills  in  grave  and  intimate  exchange 
with  Bailey's  omniscience,  you  heard  Altiora  canvass- 
ing approaching  resignations  and  possible  appoint- 
ments that  might  make  or  mar  a  revolution  in 
administrative  methods,  and  doing  it  with  a  vigorous 
directness  that  manifestly  swayed  the  decision;  and 
you  felt  you  were  in  a  sort  of  signal  box  with  levers 
all  about  you,  and  the  world  outside  there,  albeit  a 
little  dark  and  mysterious  beyond  the  window,  running 


MARGARET   IN   LONDON        203 

on  its  lines  in  ready  obedience  to  these  unhesitating 
lights,  true  and  steady  to  trim  termini. 

And  then  with  all  this  administrative  fizzle,  this 
pseudo-scientific  administrative  chatter,  dying  away  in 
your  head,  out  you  went  into  the  limitless  grimy  chaos 
of  London  streets  and  squares,  roads  and  avenues  lined 
with  teeming  houses,  each  larger  than  the  Chambers 
Street  house  and  at  least  equally  alive,  you  saw  the 
chaotic  clamour  of  hoardings,  the  jumble  of  traffic, 
the  coming  and  going  of  mysterious  myriads,  you 
heard  the  rumble  of  traffic  like  the  noise  of  a  torrent; 
a  vague  incessant  murmur  of  cries  and  voices,  wanton 
crimes  and  accidents  bawled  at  you  from  the  placards; 
imperative  unaccountable  fashions  swaggered  trium- 
phant in  dazzling  windows  of  tihe  shops;  and  you 
found  yourself  swaying  back  to  the  opposite  conviction 
that  the  huge  formless  spirit  of  the  world  it  was  that 
held  the  strings  and  danced  the  puppets  on  the  Bailey 
stage.  .  .  . 

Under  the  lamps  you  were  jostled  by  people  like 
my  Staffordshire  uncle  out  for  a  spree,  you  saw  shy 
youths  conversing  with  prostitutes,  you  passed  young 
lovers  pairing  with  an  entire  disregard  of  the  social 
suitability  of  the  "  types  "  they  might  blend  or  create, 
you  saw  men  leaning  drunken  against  lamp-posts  whom 
you  knew  for  the  "  type "  that  will  charge  with  fixed 
bayonets  into  the  face  of  death,  and  you  found  your- 
self unable  to  imagine  little  Bailey  achieving  either 
drunkenness  or  the  careless  defiance  of  annihilation. 
You  realised  that  quite  a  lot  of  types  were  under- 
represented  in  Chambers  Street,  that  feral  and  obscure 
and  altogether  monstrous  forces  must  be  at  work,  as 
yet  altogether  unassimilated  by  those  neat  administra- 
tive reorganisations. 


204      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

§* 

Altiora,  I  remember,  preluded  Margaret's  reappear- 
ance by  announcing  her  as  a  "  new  type." 

I  was  accustomed  to  go  early  to  the  Baileys'  dinners 
in  those  days,  for  a  preliminary  gossip  with  Altiora 
in  front  of  her  drawing-room  fire.  One  got  her  alone, 
and  that  early  arrival  was  a  little  sign  of  appreciation 
she  valued.  She  had  every  woman's  need  of  followers 
and  servants. 

"  I'm  going  to  send  you  down  to-night,"  she  said, 
"with  a  very  interesting  type  indeed — one  of  the  new 
generation  of  serious  gals.  Middle-class  origin — and 
quite  well  off.  Rich  in  fact.  Her  step-father  was  a 
solicitor  and  something  of  an  entrepreneur  towards  the 
end,  I  fancy — in  the  Black  Country.  There  was  a 
little  brother  died,  and  she's  lost  her  mother  quite  re- 
cently. Quite  on  her  own,  so  to  speak.  She's  never 
been  out  into  society  very  much,  and  doesn't  seem 
really  very  anxious  to  go.  .  .  .  Not  exactly  an  intel- 
lectual person,  you  know,  but  quiet,  and  great  force 
of  character.  Came  up  to  London  on  her  own  and 
came  to  us — someone  had  told  her  we  were  the  sort  of 
people  to  advise  her — to  ask  what  to  do.  I'm  sure 
she'll  interest  you.  .  .  ." 

"What  can  people  of  that  sort  do?"  I  asked.  "Is 
she  capable  of  investigation  ?  " 

Altiora  compressed  her  lips  and  shook  her  head. 
She  always  did  shake  her  head  when  you  asked  that 
of  anyone. 

"  Of  course  what  she  ought  to  do,"  said  Altiora, 
with  her  silk  dress  pulled  back  from  her  knee  before 
the  fire,  and  with  a  lift  of  her  voice  towards  a  chuckle 
at  her  daring  way  of  putting  things,  "  is  to  marry  a 
member  of  Parliament  and  see  he  does  his  work.  .  .  . 
Perhaps  she  will.  It's  a  very  exceptional  gal  who  can 


MARGARET     IN     LONDON       205 

do  anything  by  herself — quite  exceptional.  The  more 
serious  they  are — without  being  exceptional — the  more 
we  want  them  to  marry." 

Her  exposition  was  truncated  by  the  entry  of  the 
type  in  question. 

"Well!"  cried  Altiora  turning,  and  with  a  high  note 
of  welcome.  "  Here  you  are !  " 

Margaret  had  gained  in  dignity  and  prettiness  by 
the  lapse  of  five  years,  and  she  was  now  very  beautifully 
and  richly  and  simply  dressed.  Her  fair  hair  had  been 
done  in  some  way  that  made  it  seem  softer  and  more 
abundant  than  it  was  in  my  memory,  and  a  gleam  of 
purple  velvet-set  diamonds  showed  amidst  its  mist  of 
little  golden  and  brown  lines.  Her  dress  was  of  white 
and  violet,  the  last  trace  of  mourning  for  her  mother, 
and  confessed  the  gracious  droop  of  her  tall  and  slender 
body.  She  did  not  suggest  Staffordshire  at  all,  and  I 
was  puzzled  for  a  moment  to  think  where  I  had  met 
her.  Her  sweetly  shaped  mouth  with  the  slight 
obliquity  of  the  lip  and  the  little  kink  in  her  brow 
were  extraordinarily  familiar  to  me.  But  she  had 
either  been  prepared  by  Altiora  or  she  remembered  my 
name.  "  We  met,"  she  said,  "  while  my  step-father 
was  alive — at  Misterton.  You  came  to  see  us";  and 
instantly  I  recalled  the  sunshine  between  the  apple 
blossom  and  a  slender  pale  blue  girlish  shape  among 
the  daffodils,  like  something  that  had  sprung  from  a 
bulb  itself.  I  recalled  at  once  that  I  had  found  her 
very  interesting,  though  I  did  not  clearly  remember 
how  it  was  she  had  interested  me. 

Other  guests  arrived — it  was  one  of  Altiora's  boldly 
blended  mixtures  of  people  with  ideas  and  people  with 
influence  or  money  who  might  perhaps  be  expected  to 
resonate  to  them.  Bailey  came  down  late  with  an  air 
of  hurry,  and  was  introduced  to  Margaret  and  said 
absolutely  nothing  to  her — there  being  no  information 


206      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

either  to  receive  or  impart  and  nothing  to  do — but 
stood  snatching  his  left  cheek  until  I  rescued  him  and 
her,  and  left  him  free  to  congratulate  the  new  Lady 
Snape  on  her  husband's  K.C.B. 

I  took  Margaret  down.  We  achieved  no  feats  of 
mutual  expression,  except  that  it  was  abundantly  clear 
we  were  both  very  pleased  and  interested  to  meet  again, 
and  that  we  had  both  kept  memories  of  each  other. 
We  made  that  Misterton  tea-party  and  the  subsequent 
marriages  of  my  cousins  and  the  world  of  Burslem 
generally,  matter  for  quite  an  agreeable  conversation 
until  at  last  Altiorp,,  following  her  invariable  custom, 
called  me  by  name  imperatively  out  of  our  duologme. 

"  Mr.  Remington,"  she  said,  "  we  want  your  opinion " 

in  her  entirely  characteristic  effort  to  get  all  the  threads 
of  conversation  into  her  own  hands  for  the  climax  that 
always  wound  up  her  dinners.  How  the  other  women 
used  to  hate  those  concluding  raids  of  hers !  I  forget 
most  of  the  other  people  at  that  dinner,  nor  can  I 
recall  what  the  crowning  rally  was  about.  It  didn't  in 
any  way  join  on  to  my  impression  of  Margaret.  , 

In  the  drawing-room  of  the  matting  floor  I  rejoined 
her,  with  Altiora's  manifest  connivance,  and  in  the  in- 
terval I  had  been  thinking  of  our  former  meeting. 

"  Do  you  find  London,"  I  asked,  "  give  you  more 
opportunity  for  doing  things  and  learning  things  than 
Burslem  ?  " 

She  showed  at  once  she  appreciated  my  allusion  to 
her  former  confidences.  "  I  was  very  discontented 
then,"  she  said  and  paused.  "  I've  really  only  been  in 
London  for  a  few  months.  It's  so  different.  In 
Burslem,  life  seems  all  business  and  getting — without 
any  reason.  One  went  on  and  it  didn't  seem  to  mean 
anything.  At  least  anything  that  mattered.  .  .  . 
London  seems  to  be  so  full  of  meanings — all  mixed  up 
together." 


MARGARET     IN    LONDON      207 

She  knitted  her  brows  over  her  words  and  smiled 
appealingly  at  the  end  as  if  for  consideration  for 
her  inadequate  expression,  appealingly  and  almost 
humorously. 

I  looked  understandingly  at  her.  "  We  have  all/' 
I  agreed,  "to  come  to  London." 

"  One  sees  so  much  distress/'  she  added,  as  if  she 
felt  she  had  completely  omitted  something,  and  needed 
a  codicil. 

"  What  are  you  doing  in  London  ?  " 

"  I'm  thinking  of  studying.  Some  social  question. 
I  thought  perhaps  I  might  go  and  study  social  con- 
ditions as  Mrs.  Bailey  did,  go  perhaps  as  a  work-girl 
or  see  the  reality  of  living  in,  but  Mrs.  Bailey  thought 
perhaps  it  wasn't  quite  my  work." 

"  Are  you  studying  ?  " 

"  I'm  going  to  a  good  many  lectures,  and  perhaps  I 
shall  take  up  a  regular  course  at  the  Westminster 
School  of  Politics  and  Sociology.  But  Mrs.  Bailey 
doesn't  seem  to  believe  very  much  in  that  either." 

Her  faintly  whimsical  smile  returned.  "  I  seem 
rather  indefinite,"  she  apologised,  "  but  one  does  not 
want  to  get  entangled  in  things  one  can't  do.  One — 
one  has  so  many  advantages,  one's  life  seems  to  be  such 
a  trust  and  such  a  responsibility " 

She  stopped. 

"  A  man  gets  driven  into  work,"  I  said. 

"  It  must  be  splendid  to  be  Mrs.  Bailey,"  she  replied 
with  a  glance  of  envious  admiration  across  the  room. 

"  She  has  no  doubts,  anyhow,"  I  remarked. 

"  She  had/'  said  Margaret  with  the  pride  of  one  who 
has  received  great  confidences. 


"You've   met  before?"   said    Altiora,  a  day  or  so 
later. 


208      THE    NEW   MACHIAVELL1 

I  explained  when. 

"  You  find  her  interesting  ?  " 

I  saw  in  a  flash  that  Altiora  meant  to  marry  me  to 
Margaret. 

Her  intention  became  much  clearer  as  the  year 
developed.  Altiora  was  systematic  even  in  matters 
that  evade  system.  I  was  to  marry  Margaret,  and 
freed  from  the  need  of  making  an  income  I  was  to  come 
into  politics — as  an  exponent  of  Baileyism.  She  put  it 
down  with  the  other  excellent  and  advantageous  things 
that  should  occupy  her  summer  holiday.  It  was  her 
pride  and  glory  to  put  things  down  and  plan  them  out 
in  detail  beforehand,  and  I'm  not  quite  sure  that  she 
did  not  even  mark  off  the  day  upon  which  the  engage- 
ment was  to  be  declared.  If  she  did,  I  disappointed 
her.  We  didn't  come  to  an  engagement,  in  spite  of  the 
broadest  hints  and  the  glaring  obviousness  of  every- 
thing, that  summer. 

Every  summer  the  Baileys  went  out  of  London  to 
some  house  they  hired  or  borrowed,  leaving  their  secre- 
taries toiling  behind,  and  they  went  on  working  hard 
in  the  mornings  and  evenings  and  taking  exercise  in 
the  open  air  in  the  afternoon.  They  cycled  assiduously 
and  went  for  long  walks  at  a  trot,  and  raided  and 
studied  (and  incidentally  explained  themselves  to)  any 
social  "  types  "  that  lived  in  the  neighbourhood.  One 
invaded  type,  resentful  under  research,  described  them 
with  a  dreadful  aptness  as  Donna  Quixote  and  Sancho 
Panza — and  himself  as  a  harmless  windmill,  hurting  no 
one  and  signifying  nothing.  She  did  rather  tilt  at 
things.  This  particular  summer  they  were  at  a  pleas- 
ant farmhouse  in  level  country  near  Pangbourne, 
belonging  to  the  Hon.  Wilfrid  Winchester,  and  they 
asked  me  to  come  down  to  rooms  in  the  neighbourhood — 
Altiora  took  them  for  a  month  for  me  in  August — and 
board  with  them  upon  extremely  reasonable  terms; 


MARGARET    IN    LONDON      209 

and  when  I  got  there  I  found  Margeret  sitting  in  a 
hammock  at  Altiora's  feet.  Lots  of  people,  I  gathered, 
were  coming  and  going  in  the  neighbourhood,  the  Fonts 
were  in  a  villa  on  the  river,  and  the  Rickhams'  house- 
boat was  to  moor  for  some  days;  but  these  irruptions 
did  not  impede  a  great  deal  of  duologue  between  Mar- 
garet and  myself. 

Altiora  was  efficient  rather  than  artistic  in  her 
match-making.  She  sent  us  off  for  long  walks  together 
— Margaret  was  a  fairly  good  walker — she  exhumed 
some  defective  croquet  things  and  incited  us  to  croquet, 
not  understanding  that  detestable  game  is  the  worst 
stimulant  for  lovers  in  the  world.  And  Margaret  and 
I  were  always  getting  left  about,  and  finding  ourselves 
for  odd  half-hours  in  the  kitchen-garden  with  nothing 
to  do  except  talk,  or  we  were  told  with  a  wave  of  the 
hand  to  run  away  and  amuse  each  other. 

Altiora  even  tried  a  picnic  in  canoes,  knowing  from 
fiction  rather  than  imagination  or  experience  the  con- 
clusive nature  of  such  excursions.  But  there  she 
fumbled  at  the  last  moment,  and  elected  at  the  river's 
brink  to  share  a  canoe  with  me.  Bailey  showed  so 
much  zeal  and  so  little  skill — his  hat  fell  off  and  he 
became  miraculously  nothing  but  paddle-clutching 
hands  and  a  vast  wrinkled  brow — that  at  last  he  had 
to  be  paddled  ignominiously  by  Margaret,  while  Altiora, 
after  a  phase  of  rigid  discretion,  as  nearly  as  possible 
drowned  herself — and  me  no  doubt  into  the  bargain — 
with  a  sudden  lateral  gesture  of  the  arm  to  emphasise 
the  high  note  with  which  she  dismissed  the  efficiency 
of  the  Charity  Organisation  Society.  We  shipped 
about  an  inch  of  water  and  sat  in  it  for  the  rest  of  the 
time,  an  inconvenience  she  disregarded  heroically.  We 
had  difficulties  in  landing  Oscar  from  his  frail  craft 
upon  the  ait  of  our  feasting, — he  didn't  balance  side- 
ways and  was  much  alarmed,  and  afterwards,  as 


210      THE   NEW    MACHIAVELLI 

Margaret  had  a  pain  in  her  back,  I  took  him  in  my 
canoe,  let  him  hide  his  shame  with  an  ineffectual  but 
not  positively  harmful  paddle,  and  towed  the  other  by 
means  of  the  joined  painters.  Still  it  was  the  fault  of 
the  inadequate  information  supplied  in  the  books  and 
not  of  Altiora  that  that  was  not  the  date  of  my 
betrothal. 

I  find  it  not  a  little  difficult  to  state  what  kept  me 
back  from  proposing  marriage  to  Margaret  that  sum- 
mer, and  what  urged  me  forward  at  last  to  marry  her. 
It  is  so  much  easier  to  remember  one's  resolutions  than 
to  remember  the  moods  and  suggestions  that  produced 
them. 

Marrying  and  getting  married  was,  I  think,  a  pretty 
simple  affair  to  Altiora;  it  was  something  that  hap- 
pened to  the  adolescent  and  unmarried  when  you 
threw  them  together  under  the  circumstances  of  health, 
warmth  and  leisure.  It  happened  with  the  kindly  and 
approving  smiles  of  the  more  experienced  elders  who 
had  organised  these  proximities.  The  young  people 
married,  settled  down,  children  ensued,  and  father  and 
mother  turned  their  minds,  now  decently  and  properly 
disillusioned,  to  other  things.  That  to  Altiora  was  the 
normal  sexual  life,  and  she  believed  it  to  be  the  quality 
of  the  great  bulk  of  the  life  about  her. 

One  of  the  great  barriers  to  human  understanding 
is  the  wide  temperamental  difference  one  finds  in  the 
values  of  things  relating  to  sex.  It  is  the  issue  upon 
which  people  most  need  training  in  charity  and  im- 
aginative sympathy.  Here  are  no  universal  standards 
at  all,  and  indeed  for  no  single  man  nor  woman  does 
there  seem  to  be  any  fixed  standard,  so  much  do  the 
accidents  of  circumstances  and  one's  physical  phases 
affect  one's  interpretations.  There  is  nothing  in  the 
whole  range  of  sexual  fact  that  may  not  seem  supremely 
beautiful  or  humanly  jolly  or  magnificently  wicked  or 


MARGARET  IN  LONDON     211 

disgusting  or  trivial  or  utterly  insignificant,  accord- 
ing to  the  eye  that  sees  or  the  mood  that  colours. 
Here  is  something  that  may  fill  the  skies  and  every 
waking  hour  or  be  almost  completely  banished  from  a 
life.  It  may  be  everything  on  Monday  and  less  than 
nothing  on  Saturday.  And  we  make  our  laws  and  rules 
as  though  in  these  matters  all  men  and  women  were 
commensurable  one  with  another,  with  an  equal  stead- 
fast passion  and  an  equal  constant  duty.  .  .  . 

I  don't  know  what  dreams  Altiora  may  have  had 
in  her  schoolroom  days,  I  always  suspected  her  of 
suppressed  and  forgotten  phases,  but  certainly  her 
general  effect  now  was  of  an  entirely  passionless  world- 
liness  in  these  matters.  Indeed  so  far  as  I  could  get  at 
her,  she  regarded  sexual  passion  as  being  hardly  more 
legitimate  in  a  civilised  person  than — let  us  say — 
homicidal  mania.  She  must  have  forgotten — and 
Bailey  too.  I  suspect  she  forgot  before  she  married 
him.  I  don't  suppose  either  of  them  had  the  slightest 
intimation  of  the  dimensions  sexual  love  can  take  in 
the  thoughts  of  the  great  majority  of  people  with 
whom  they  come  in  contact.  They  loved  in  their  way 
— an  intellectual  way  it  was  and  a  fond  way — but  it 
had  no  relation  to  beauty  and  physical  sensation — 
except  that  there  seemed  a  decree  of  exile  against 
these  things.  They  got  their  glow  in  high  moments  of 
altruistic  ambition — and  in  moments  of  vivid  worldly 
success.  They  sat  at  opposite  ends  of  their  dinner 
table  with  so  and  so  "  captured,"  and  so  and  so,  flushed 
with  a  mutual  approval.  They  saw  people  in  love  for- 
getful and  distraught  about  them,  and  just  put  it 
down  to  forgetfulness  and  distraction.  At  any  rate 
Altiora  manifestly  viewed  my  situation  and  Margaret's 
with  an  abnormal  and  entirely  misleading  simplicity. 
There  was  the  girl,  rich,  with  an  acceptable  claim  to 
be  beautiful,  shiningly  virtuous,  quite  capable  of  po- 


212      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

litical  interests,  and  there  was  I,  talented,  ambitious 
and  full  of  political  and  social  passion,  in  need  of  just 
the  money,  devotion  and  regularisation  Margaret  could 
provide.  We  were  both  unmarried — white  sheets  of  un- 
inscribed  paper.  Was  there  ever  a  simpler  situation? 
What  more  could  we  possibly  want? 

She  was  even  a  little  offended  at  the  inconclusiveness 
that  did  not  settle  things  at  Pangbourne.  I  seemed  to 
her,  I  suspect,  to  reflect  upon  her  judgment  and  good 
intentions. 

§  7 

I  didn't  see  things  with  Altiora's  simplicity. 

I  admired  Margaret  very  much,  I  was  fully  aware  of 
all  that  she  and  I  might  give  each  other;  indeed  so 
far  as  Altiora  went  we  were  quite  in  agreement.  But 
what  seemed  solid  ground  to  Altiora  and  the  ultimate 
footing  of  her  emasculated  world,  was  to  me  just  the 
superficial  covering  of  a  gulf — oh!  abysses  of  vague 
and  dim,  and  yet  stupendously  significant  things. 

I  couldn't  dismiss  the  interests  and  the  passion  of 
sex  as  Altiora  did.  Work,  I  agreed,  was  important; 
career  and  success;  but  deep  unanalysable  instincts 
told  me  this  preoccupation  was  a  thing  quite  as  impor- 
tant; dangerous,  interfering,  destructive  indeed,  but 
none  the  less  a  dominating  interest  in  life.  I  have 
told  how  flittingly  and  uninvited  it  came  like  a  moth 
from  the  outer  twilight  into  my  life,  how  it  grew  in 
me  with  my  manhood,  how  it  found  its  way  to  speech 
and  grew  daring,  and  led  me  at  last  to  experience. 
After  that  adventure  at  Locarno  sex  and  the  interests 
and  desires  of  sex  never  left  me  for  long  at  peace.  I 
went  on  with  my  work  and  my  career,  and  all  the  time 
it  was  like — like  someone  talking  ever  and  again  in  a 
room  while  one  tries  to  write. 

There  were  times  when  I  could  have  wished  the 
porld  a  world  all  of  men,  so  greatly  did  this  unassimi- 


MARGARET   IN   LONDON     213 

lated  series  of  motives  and  curiosities  hamper  me;  and 
times  when  I  could  have  wished  the  world  all  of  women. 
I  seemed  always  to  be  seeking  something  in  women,  in 
girls,  and  I  was  never  clear  what  it  was  I  was  seeking. 
But  never — even  at  my  coarsest — was  I  moved  by 
physical  desire  alone.  Was  I  seeking  help  and  fellow- 
ship? Was  I  seeking  some  intimacy  with  beauty? 
It  was  a  thing  too  formless  to  state,  that  I  seemed 
always  desiring  to  attain  and  never  attaining.  Waves 
of  gross  sensuousness  arose  out  of  this  preoccupation, 
carried  me  to  a  crisis  of  gratification  or  disappointment 
that  was  clearly  not  the  needed  thing;  they  passed 
and  left  my  mind  free  again  for  a  time  to  get  on  with 
the  permanent  pursuits  of  my  life.  And  then  presently 
this  solicitude  would  have  me  again,  an  irrelevance  as 
it  seemed,  and  yet  a  constantly  recurring  demand. 

I  don't  want  particularly  to  dwell  upon  things  that 
are  disagreeable  for  others  to  read,  but  I  cannot  leave 
them  out  of  m,y  story  and  get  the  right  proportions  of 
the  forces  I  am  balancing.  I  was  no  abnormal  man, 
and  that  world  of  order  we  desire  to  make  must  be 
built  of  such  stuff  as  I  was  and  am  and  can  beget. 
You  cannot  have  a  world  of  Baileys;  it  would  end  in 
one  orderly  generation.  Humanity  is  begotten  in 
Desire,  lives  by  Desire. 


"Love  which  is  lust,  is  the  Lamp  in  the  Tomb; 
Love  which  is  lust,  is  the  Call  from  the  Gloom." 


I  echo  Henley. 

I  suppose  the  life  of  celibacy  which  the  active,  well- 
fed,  well-exercised  and  imaginatively  stirred  young 
man  of  the  educated  classes  is  supposed  to  lead  from 
the  age  of  nineteen  or  twenty,  when  Nature  certainly 
meant  him  to  marry,  to  thirty  or  more,  when  civilisa- 


214      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

tion  permits  him  to  do  so,  is  the  most  impossible  thing 
in  the  world.  We  deal  here  with  facts  that  are  kept 
secret  and  obscure,  but  I  doubt  for  my  own  part  if 
more  than  one  man  out  of  five  in  our  class  satisfies  that 
ideal  demand.  The  rest  are  even  as  I  was,  and  Hather- 
leigh  and  Esmeer  and  all  the  men  I  knew.  I  draw  no 
lessons  and  offer  no  panacea;  I  have  to  tell  the  quality 
of  life,  and  this  is  how  it  is.  This  is  how  it  will  remain 
until  men  and  women  have  the  courage  to  face  the 
facts  of  life. 

I  was  no  systematic  libertine,  you  must  understand; 
things  happened  to  me  and  desire  drove  me.  Any 
young  man  would  have  served  for  that  Locarno  adven- 
ture, and  after  that  what  had  been  a  mystic  and  won- 
derful thing  passed  rapidly  into  a  gross,  manifestly 
misdirected  and  complicating  one.  I  can  count  a 
meagre  tale  of  five  illicit  loves  in  the  days  of  my  youth, 
to  include  that  first  experience,  and  of  them  all  only 
two  were  sustained  relationships.  Besides  these  five 
"  affairs,"  on  one  or  two  occasions  I  dipped  so  low  as  the 
inky  dismal  sensuality  of  the  streets,  and  made  one  of 
those  pairs  of  correlated  figures,  the  woman  in  her 
squalid  finery  sailing  homeward,  the  man  modestly 
aloof  and  behind,  that  every  night  in  the  London  year 
flit  by  the  score  of  thousands  across  the  sight  of  the 
observant. 

How  ugly  it  is  to  recall;  ugly  and  shameful  now 
without  qualification!  Yet  at  the  time  there  was 
surely  something  not  altogether  ugly  in  it — something 
that  has  vanished,  some  fine  thing  mortally  ailing. 

One  such  occasion  I  recall  as  if  it  were  a  vision 
deep  down  in  a  pit,  as  if  it  had  happened  in  another 
state  of  existence  to  someone  else.  And  yet  it  is  the 
sort  of  thing  that  has  happened,  once  or  twice  at  least, 
to  half  the  men  in  London  who  have  been  in  a  position 
to  make  it  possible.  Let  me  try  and  give  you  its 


MARGARET  IN  LONDON        215 

peculiar  effect.  Man  or  woman,  you  ought  to  know 
of  it. 

Figure  to  yourself  a  dingy  room,  somewhere  in  that 
network  of  streets  that  lies  about  Tottenham  Court 
Road,  a  dingy  bedroom  lit  by  a  solitary  candle  and 
carpeted  with  scraps  and  patches,  with  curtains  of 
cretonne  closing  the  window,  and  a  tawdry  ornament 
of  paper  in  the  grate.  I  sit  on  a  bed  beside  a  weary- 
eyed,  fair-haired,  sturdy  young  woman,  half  undressed, 
who  is  telling  me  in  broken  German  something  that  my 
knowledge  of  German  is  at  first  inadequate  to  under- 
stand. .  .  . 

I  thought  she  was  boasting  about  her  family,  and 
then  slowly  the  meaning  came  to  me.  She  was  a  Lett 
from  near  Libau  in  Courland,  and  she  was  telling  me — 
just  as  one  tells  something  too  strange  for  comment  or 
emotion — how  her  father  had  been  shot  and  her  sister 
outraged  and  murdered  before  her  eyes. 

It  was  as  if  one  had  dipped  into  something  pri- 
mordial and  stupendous  beneath  the  smooth  and  trivial 
surfaces  of  life.  There  was  I,  you  know,  the  promis- 
ing young  don  from  Cambridge,  who  wrote  quite  bril- 
liantly about  politics  and  might  presently  get  into 
Parliament,  with  my  collar  and  tie  in  my  hand,  and  a 
certain  sense  of  shameful  adventure  fading  out  of  my 
mind. 

"Ach  Gott!"  she  sighed  by  way  of  comment,  and 
mused  deeply  for  a  moment  before  she  turned  her  face 
to  me,  as  to  something  forgotten  and  remembered,  and 
assumed  the  half-hearted  meretricious  smile. 

"  Bin  ich  eine  hubsche  ? "  she  asked  like  one  who 
repeats  a  lesson. 

I  was  moved  to  crave  her  pardon  and  come  away. 

"  Bin  ich  eine  hubsche  ?  "  she  asked  a  little  anxiously, 
laying  a  detaining  hand  upon  me,  and  evidently  not 
understanding  a  word  of  what  I  was  striving  to  say. 


216      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 


§8 

I  find  it  extraordinarily  difficult  to  recall  the 
phases  by  which  I  passed  from  my  first  admiration  of 
Margaret's  earnestness  and  unconscious  daintiness  to 
an  intimate  acquaintance.  The  earlier  encounters 
stand  out  clear  and  hard,  but  then  the  impressions 
become  crowded  and  mingle  not  only  with  each  other 
but  with  all  the  subsequent  developments  of  relation- 
ship, the  enormous  evolutions  of  interpretation  and 
comprehension  between  husband  and  wife.  Dipping 
into  my  memories  is  like  dipping  into  a  ragbag,  one 
brings  out  this  memory  or  that,  with  no  intimation 
of  how  they  came  in  time  or  what  led  to  them  and 
joined  them  together.  And  they  are  all  mixed  up 
with  subsequent  associations,  with  sympathies  and  dis- 
cords, habits  of  intercourse,  surprises  and  disappoint- 
ments and  discovered  misunderstandings.  I  know  only 
that  always  my  feelings  for  Margaret  were  complicated 
feelings,  woven  of  many  and  various  strands. 

It  .is  one  of  the  curious  neglected  aspects  of  life 
how  at  the  same  time  and  in  relation  to  the  same 
reality  we  can  have  in  our  minds  streams  of  thought 
at  quite  different  levels.  We  can  be  at  the  same  time 
idealising  a  person  and  seeing  and  criticising  that 
person  quite  coldly  and  clearly,  and  we  slip  un- 
consciously from  level  to  level  and  produce  all  sorts  of 
inconsistent  acts.  In  a  sense  I  had  no  illusions  about 
Margaret;  in  a  sense  my  conception  of  Margaret  was 
entirely  poetic  illusion.  I  don't  think  I  was  ever  blind 
to  certain  defects  of  hers,  and  quite  as  certainly  they 
didn't  seem  to  matter  in  the  slightest  degree.  Her 
mind  had  a  curious  want  of  vigour,  "  flatness  "  is  the 
only  word;  she  never  seemed  to  escape  from  her 
phrase;  her  way  of  thinking,  her  way  of  doing  was 


MARGARET   IN   LONDON     217 

indecisive;  she  remained  in  her  attitude,  it  did  not  flow 
out  to  easy,  confirmatory  action. 

I  saw  this  quite  clearly,  and  when  we  walked  and 
talked  together  I  seemed  always  trying  for  animation 
in  her  and  never  finding  it.  I  would  state  my  ideas. 
"  I  know,"  she  would  say,  "  I  know." 

I  talked  about  myself  and  she  listened  wonderfully, 
but  she  made  no  answering  revelations.  I  talked 
politics,  and  she  remarked  with  her  blue  eyes  wide  and 
earnest:  "Every  word  you  say  seems  so  just." 

I  admired  her  appearance  tremendously  but — I  can 
only  express  it  by  saying  I  didn't  want  to  touch  her. 
Her  fair  hair  was  always  delectably  done.  It  flowed 
beautifully  over  her  pretty  small  ears,  and  she  would 
tie  its  fair  ceilings  with  fillets  of  black  or  blue  velvet 
that  carried  pretty  buckles  of  silver  and  paste.  The 
light,  the  faint  down  on  her  brow  and  cheek  was  de- 
lightful. And  it  was  clear  to  me  that  I  made  her 
happy. 

My  sense  of  her  deficiencies  didn't  stand  in  the  way 
of  my  falling  at  last  very  deeply  in  love  with  her. 
Her  very  shortcomings  seemed  to  offer  me  some- 
thing. .  .  . 

She  stood  in  my  mind  for  goodness — and  for  things 
from  which  it  seemed  to  me  my  hold  was  slip- 
ping. 

She  seemed  to  promise  a  way  of  escape  from  the 
deepening  opposition  in  me  between  physical  passions 
and  the  constructive  career,  the  career  of  wide  aims  and 
human  service,  upon  which  I  had  embarked.  All  the 
time  that  I  was  seeing  her  as  a  beautiful,  fragile,  rather 
ineffective  girl,  I  was  also  seeing  her  just  as  consciously 
as  a  shining  slender  figure,  a  radiant  reconciliation, 
coming  into  my  darkling  disorders  of  lust  and  impulse. 
I  could  understand  clearly  that  she  was  incapable  of 
the  most  necessary  subtleties  of  political  thought,  and 


218      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

yet  I  could  contemplate  praying  to  her  and  putting 
all  the  intricate  troubles  of  my  life  at  her  feet. 

Before  the  reappearance  of  Margaret  in  my  world 
at  all  an  unwonted  disgust  with  the  consequences  and 
quality  of  my  passions  had  arisen  in  my  mind.  Among 
other  things  that  moment  with  the  Lettish  girl  haunted 
me  persistently.  I  would  see  myself  again  and  again 
sitting  amidst  those  sluttish  surroundings,  collar  and 
tie  in  hand,  while  her  heavy  German  words  grouped 
themselves  to  a  slowly  apprehended  meaning.  I  would 
feel  again  with  a  fresh  stab  of  remorse,  that  this  was 
not  a  flash  of  adventure,  this  was  not  seeing  life  in  any 
permissible  sense,  but  a  dip  into  tragedy,  dishonour, 
hideous  degradation,  and  the  pitiless  cruelty  of  a  world 
as  yet  uncontrolled  by  any  ordered  will. 

"  Good  God !  "  I  put  it  to  myself,  "  that  I  should 
finish  the  work  those  Cossacks  had  begun !  I  who  want 
order  and  justice  before  everything!  There's  no  way 
out  of  it,  no  decent  excuse!  If  I  didn't  think,  I  ought 
to  have  thought !  "  ... 

"  How  did  I  get  to  it  ?  "...  I  would  ransack  the 
phases  of  my  development  from  the  first  shy  unveil- 
ing of  a  hidden  wonder  to  the  last  extremity  as  a  man 
will  go  through  muddled  account  books  to  find  some 
disorganising  error.  .  .  . 

I  was  also  involved  at  that  time — I  find  it  hard  to 
place  these  things  in  the  exact  order  of  their  dates 
because  they  were  so  disconnected  with  the  regular 
progress  of  my  work  and  life — in  an  intrigue,  a  clumsy, 
sensuous,  pretentious,  artificially  stimulated  intrigue, 
with  a  Mrs.  Larrimer,  a  woman  living  separated  from 
her  husband.  I  will  not  go  into  particulars  of  that 
episode,  nor  how  we  quarrelled  and  chafed  one  another. 
She  was  at  once  unfaithful  and  jealous  and  full  of 
whims  about  our  meetings;  she  was  careless  of  our 
secret,  and  vulgarised  our  relationship  by  intolerable 


MARGARET   IN  LONDON     219 

interpretations;  except  for  some  glowing  moments  of 
gratification,  except  for  the  recurrent  and  essentially 
vicious  desire  that  drew  us  back  to  each  other  again, 
we  both  fretted  at  a  vexatious  and  unexpectedly  bind- 
ing intimacy.  The  interim  was  full  of  the  quality  of 
work  delayed,  of  time  and  energy  wasted,  of  insecure 
precautions  against  scandal  and  exposure.  Disappoint- 
ment is  almost  inherent  in  illicit  love.  I  had,  and  per- 
haps it  was  part  of  her  recurrent  irritation  also,  a 
feeling  as  though  one  had  followed  something  fine  and 
beautiful  into  a  net — into  bird  lime!  These  furtive 
scuffles,  this  sneaking  into  shabby  houses  of  assigna- 
tion, was  what  we  had  made  out  of  the  suggestion  of 
pagan  beauty;  this  was  the  reality  of  our  vision  of 
nymphs  and  satyrs  dancing  for  the  joy  of  life  amidst 
incessant  sunshine.  We  had  laid  hands  upon  the  won- 
der and  glory  of  bodily  love  and  wasted  them.  .  .  . 
It  was  the  sense  of  waste,  of  finely  beautiful  possi- 
bilities getting  entangled  and  marred  for  ever  that  op- 
pressed me.  I  had  missed,  I  had  lost.  I  did  not  turn 
from  these  things  after  the  fashion  of  the  Baileys,  as 
one  turns  from  something  low  and  embarrassing.  I 
felt  that  these  great  organic  forces  were  still  to  be 
wrought  into  a  harmony  with  my  constructive  passion. 
I  felt  too  that  I  was  not  doing  it.  I  had  not  under- 
stood the  forces  in  this  struggle  nor  its  Mature,  and  as 
I  learnt  I  failed.  I  had  been  started  wrong,  I  had 
gone  on  wrong,  in  a  world  that  was  muddled  and  con- 
fused, full  of  false  counsel  and  erratic  shames  and 
twisted  temptations.  I  learnt  to  see  it  so  by  failures 
that  were  perhaps  destroying  any  chance  of  profit  in 
my  lessons.  Moods  of  clear  keen  industry  alternated 
with  moods  of  relapse  and  indulgence  and  moods  of 
dubiety  and  remorse.  I  was  not  going  on  as  the 
Baileys  thought  I  was  going  on.  There  were  times 
when  the  blindness  of  the  Baileys  irritated  me  intensely. 


220      THE  NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

Beneath  the  ostensible  success  of  those  years,  between 
twenty-three  and  twenty-eight,  this  rottenness,  known 
to  scarcely  any  one  but  myself,  grew  and  spread.  My 
sense  of  the  probability  of  a  collapse  intensified.  I 
knew  indeed  now,  even  as  Willersley  had  prophesied 
five  years  before,  that  I  was  entangling  myself  in  some- 
thing that  might  smother  all  my  uses  in  the  world. 
Down  there  among  those  incommunicable  difficulties,  I 
was  puzzled  and  blundering.  I  was  losing  my  hold 
upon  things;  the  chaotic  and  adventurous  element  in 
life  was  spreading  upward  and  getting  the  better  of 
me,  over-mastering  me  and  all  my  will  to  rule  and 
make.  .  .  .  And  the  strength,  the  drugging  urgency 
of  the  passion!  .  .  . 

Margaret  shone  at  times  in  my  imagination  like  a 
radiant  angel  in  a  world  of  mire  and  disorder,  in  a 
world  of  cravings,  hot  and  dull  red  like  scars  in- 
flamed. .  .  . 

I  suppose  it  was  because  I  had  so  great  a  need  of 
such  help  as  her  whiteness  proffered,  that  I  could 
ascribe  impossible  perfections  to  her,  a  power  of  in- 
tellect, a  moral  power  and  patience  to  which  she,  poor 
fellow  mortal,  had  indeed  no  claim.  If  only  a  few  of 
us  were  angels  and  freed  from  the  tangle  of  effort,  how 
easy  life  might  be!  I  wanted  her  so  badly,  so  very 
badly,  to  be  what  I  needed.  I  wanted  a  woman  to 
save  me.  I  forced  myself  to  see  her  as  I  wished  to  see 
her.  Her  tepidities  became  infinite  delicacies,  her  men- 
tal vagueness  an  atmospheric  realism.  The  harsh  pre- 
cisions of  the  Baileys  and  Altiora's  blunt  directness 
threw  up  her  fineness  into  relief  and  made  a  grace  of 
every  weakness. 

Mixed  up  with  the  memory  of  times  when  I  talked 
with  Margaret  as  one  talks  politely  to  those  who  are 
hopelessly  inferior  in  mental  quality,  explaining  with 
a,  false  lucidity,  welcoming  and  encouraging  the  feeblest 


MARGARET     IN    LONDON      221 

response,  when  possible  moulding  and  directing,  are 
times  when  I  did  indeed,  as  the  old  phrase  goes,  wor- 
ship the  ground  she  trod  on.  I  was  equally  honest  and 
unconscious  of  inconsistency  at  each  extreme.  But  in 
neither  phase  could  I  find  it  easy  to  make  love  to  Mar- 
garet. For  in  the  first  I  did  not  want  to,  though  I 
talked  abundantly  to  her  of  marriage  and  so  forth, 
and  was  a  little  puzzled  at  myself  for  not  going  on  to 
some  personal  application,  and  in  the  second  she  seemed 
inaccessible,  I  felt  I  must  make  confessions  and  put 
things  before  her  that  would  be  the  grossest  outrage 
upon  the  noble  purity  I  attributed  to  her. 

§  9 

I  went  to  Margaret  at  last  to  ask  her  to  marry  me, 
wrought  up  to  the  mood  of  one  who  stakes  his  life  on  a 
cast.  Separated  from  her,  and  with  the  resonance  of 
an  evening  of  angry  recriminations  with  Mrs.  Larrimer 
echoing  in  my  mind,  I  discovered  myself  to  be  quite 
passionately  in  love  with  Margaret.  Last  shreds  of 
doubt  vanished.  It  has  always  been  a  feature  of  our 
relationship  that  Margaret  absent  means  more  to  me 
than  Margaret  present;  her  memory  distils  from  its 
dross  and  purifies  in  me.  All  my  criticisms  and  quali- 
fications of  her  vanished  into  some  dark  corner  of  my 
mind.  She  was  the  lady  of  my  salvation;  I  must  win 
my  way  to  her  or  perish. 

I  went  to  her  at  last,  for  all  that  I  knew  she  loved 
me,  in  passionate  self-abasement,  white  and  a-tremble. 
She  was  staying  with  the  Rockleys  at  Woking,  for 
Shena  Rockley  had  been  at  Bennett  Hall  with  her 
and  they  had  resumed  a  close  intimacy;  and  I  went 
down  to  her  on  an  impulse,  unheralded.  I  was  kept 
waiting  for  some  minutes,  I  remember,  in  a  little  room 
upon  which  a  conservatory  opened,  a  conservatory  full 
of  pots  of  large  mauve-edged,  white  cyclamens  in 


222      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

flower.  And  there  was  a  big  lacquer  cabinet,  a  Chinese 
thing,  I  suppose,  of  black  and  gold  against  the  red- 
toned  wall.  To  this  day  the  thought  of  Margaret  is 
inseparably  bound  up  with  the  sight  of  a  cyclamen's 
back-turned  petals. 

She  came  in,  looking  pale  and  drooping  rather  more 
than  usual.  I  suddenly  realised  that  Altiora's  hint  of 
a  disappointment  leading  to  positive  illness  was  some- 
thing more  than  a  vindictive  comment.  She  closed  the 
door  and  came  across  to  me  and  took  and  dropped  my 
hand  and  stood  still.  "  What  is  it  you  want  with  me  ?  " 
she  asked. 

The  speech  I  had  been  turning  over  and  over  in  my 
mind  on  the  way  vanished  at  the  sight  of  her. 

"  I  want  to  talk  to  you,"  I  answered  lamely. 

For  some  seconds  neither  of  us  said  a  word. 

"  I  want  to  tell  you  things  about  my  life,"  I  began. 

She   answered  with  a   scarcely   audible   "  yes." 

"  I  almost  asked  you  to  marry  me  at  Pangbourne," 
I  plunged.  "  I  didn't.  I  didn't  because — because  you 
had  too  much  to  give  me." 

"  Too  much !  "  she  echoed,  "  to  give  you !  "  She  had 
lifted  her  eyes  to  my  face  and  the  colour  was  coming 
into  her  cheeks. 

"  Don't  misunderstand  me,"  I  said  hastily.  "  I 
want  to  tell  you  things,  things  you  don't  know.  Don't 
answer  me.  I  want  to  tell  you." 

She  stood  before  the  fireplace  with  her  ultimate 
answer  shining  through  the  quiet  of  her  face.  "  Go 
on,"  she  said,  very  softly.  It  was  so  pitilessly  mani- 
fest she  was  resolved  to  idealise  the  situation  whatever 
I  might  say.  I  began  walking  up  and  down  the  room 
between  those  cyclamens  and  the  cabinet.  There  were 
little  gold  fishermen  on  the  cabinet  fishing  from  little 
islands  that  each  had  a  pagoda  and  a  tree,  and  there 
were  also  men  in  boats  or  something,  I  couldn't  deter- 


MARGARET     IN    LONDON       223 

mine  what,  and  some  obscure  sub-office  in  my  mind 
concerned  itself  with  that  quite  intently.  Yet  I  seem 
to  have  been  striving  with  all  my  being  to  get  words 
for  the  truth  of  things.  "  You  see/'  I  emerged,  "  you 
make  everything  possible  to  me.  You  can  give  me 
help  and  sympathy,  support,  understanding.  You 
know  my  political  ambitions.  You  know  all  that  I 
might  do  in  the  world.  I  do  so  intensely  want  to  do 
constructive  things,  big  things  perhaps,  in  this  wild 
jumble.  .  .  .  Only  you  don't  know  a  bit  what  I  am.  I 
want  to  tell  you  what  I  am.  I'm  complex.  ...  I'm 
streaked." 

I  glanced  at  her,  and  she  was  regarding  me  with  an 
expression  of  blissful  disregard  for  any  meaning  I  was 
seeking  to  convey. 

"  You  see,"  I  said,  "  I'm  a  bad  man." 

She  sounded  a  note  of  valiant  incredulity. 

Everything  seemed  to  be  slipping  away  from  me.  I 
pushed  on  to  the  ugly  facts  that  remained  over  from 
the  wreck  of  my  interpretation.  "What  has  held  me 
back,"  I  said,  "  is  the  thought  that  you  could  not  pos- 
sibly understand  certain  things  in  my  life.  Men  are 
not  pure  as  women  are.  I  have  had  love  affairs.  I 
mean  I  have  had  affairs.  Passion — desire.  You  see,  I 
have  had  a  mistress,  I  have  been  entangled " 

She  seemed  about  to  speak,  but  I  interrupted.  "I'm 
not  telling  you,"  I  said,  "what  I  meant  to  tell  you.  I 
want  you  to  know  clearly  that  there  is  another  side  to 
my  life,  a  dirty  side.  Deliberately  I  say,  dirty.  It 
didn't  seem  so  at  first " 

I  stopped  blankly.  "  Dirty,"  I  thought,  was  the 
most  idiotic  choice  of  words  to  have  made. 

I  had  never  in  any  tolerable  sense  of  the  word  been 
dirty. 

"'  I  drifted  into  this — as  men  do/'  I  said  after  a 
little  pause  and  stopped  again. 


224      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

She  was  looking  at  me  with  her  wide  blue  eyes. 

"  Did  you  imagine,"  she  began,  "  that  I  thought  you 
—that  I  expected " 

"  But  how  can  you  know  ?  " 

"  I  know.     I   do  know." 

"  But "  I  began. 

"  I  know,"  she  persisted,  dropping  her  eyelids.  "  Of 
course  I  know,"  and  nothing  could  have  convinced  me 
more  completely  that  she  did  not  know. 

"  All  men "  she  generalised.  "  A  woman  does 

not  understand  these  temptations." 

I  was  astonished  beyond  measure  at  her  way  of  tak- 
ing my  confession.  .  .  . 

"Of  course,"  she  said,  hesitating  a  little  over  a 
transparent  difficulty,  "  it  is  all  over  and  past." 

"  It's  all  over  and  past,"  I  answered. 

There  was  a  little  pause. 

"  I  don't  want  to  know,"  she  said.  "  None  of  that 
seems  to  matter  now  in  the  slightest  degree." 

She  looked  up  and  smiled  as  though  we  had  ex- 
changed some  acceptable  commonplaces.  "  Poor  dear !  " 
she  said,  dismissing  everything,  and  put  out  her  arms, 
and  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  could  hear  the  Lettish  girl 
in  the  background — doomed  safety  valve  of  purity  in 
this  intolerable  world! — telling  something  in  indistin- 
guishable German — I  know  not  what  nor  why.  .  .  . 

I  took  Margaret  in  my  arms  and  kissed  her.  Her 
eyes  were  wet  with  tears.  She  clung  to  me  and  was 
near,  I  felt,  to  sobbing. 

"  I  have  loved  you,"  she  whispered  presently,  "  Oh ! 
ever  since  we  met  in  Misterton — six  years  and  more 
ago." 


CHAPTER  THE   THIRD 

MARGARET    IN   VENICE 


THERE  comes  into  my  mind  a  confused  memory  of  con- 
versations with  Margaret;  we  must  have  had  dozens 
altogether,  and  they  mix  in  now  for  the  most  part 
inextricably  not  only  with  one  another,  but  with  later 
talks  and  with  things  we  discussed  at  Pangbourne.  We 
had  the  immensest  anticipations  of  the  years  and  oppor- 
tunities that  lay  before  us.  I  was  now  very  deeply  in 
love  with  her  indeed.  I  felt  not  that  I  had  cleaned 
up  my  life  but  that  she  had.  We  called  each  other 
"  confederate  "  I  remember,  and  made  during  our  brief 
engagement  a  series  of  visits  to  the  various  legislative 
bodies  in  London,  the  County  Council,  the  House  of 
Commons,  where  we  dined  with  Villiers,  and  the  St. 
Pancras  Vestry,  where  we  heard  Shaw  speaking.  I  was 
full  of  plans  and  so  was  she  of  the  way  in  which  we 
were  to  live  and  work.  We  were  to  pay  back  in  public 
service  whatever  excess  of  wealth  beyond  his  merits  old 
Seddon's  economic  advantage  had  won  for  him  from 
the  toiling  people  in  the  potteries.  The  end  of  the 
Boer  War  was  so  recent  that  that  blessed  word  "  ef- 
ficiency "  echoed  still  in  people's  minds  and  thoughts. 
Lord  Roseberry  in  a  memorable  oration  had  put  it  into 
the  heads  of  the  big  outer  public,  but  the  Baileys  with 
a  certain  show  of  justice  claimed  to  have  set  it  going 
in  the  channels  that  took  it  to  him — if  as  a  matter  of 
fact  it  was  taken  to  him.  But  then  it  was  their  habit 
to  make  claims  of  that  sort.  They  certainly  did  their 

225 


226      THE   NEW    MACHIAVELLI 

share  to  keep  "  efficient "  going.  Altiora's  highest 
praise  was  "  thoroughly  efficient."  We  were  to  be  a 
"thoroughly  efficient"  political  couple  of  the  "new 
type."  She  explained  us  to  herself  and  Oscar,  she 
explained  us  to  ourselves,  she  explained  us  to  the  peo- 
ple who  came  to  her  dinners  and  afternoons  until  the 
world  was  highly  charged  with  explanation  and  expecta- 
tion, and  the  proposal  that  I  should  be  the  Liberal 
candidate  for  the  Kinghamstead  Division  seemed  the 
most  natural  development  in  the  world. 

I  was  full  of  the  ideal  of  hard  restrained  living  and 
relentless  activity,  and  throughout  a  beautiful  Novem- 
ber at  Venice,  where  chiefly  we  spent  our  honeymoon, 
we  turned  over  and  over  again  and  discussed  in  every 
aspect  our  conception  of  a  life  tremendously  focussed 
upon  the  ideal  of  social  service. 

Most  clearly  there  stands  out  a  picture  of  ourselves 
talking  in  a  gondola  on  our  way  to  Torcella.  Far 
away  behind  us  the  smoke  of  Murano  forms  a  black 
stain  upon  an  immense  shining  prospect  of  smooth  wa- 
ter, water  as  unruffled  and  luminous  as  the  sky  above,  a 
mirror  on  which  rows  of  posts  and  distant  black  high- 
stemmed,  swan-necked  boats  with  their  minutely  clear 
swinging  gondoliers,  float  aerially.  Remote  and  low 
before  us  rises  the  little  tower  of  our  destination.  Our 
men  swing  together  and  their  oars  swirl  leisurely 
through  the  water,  bump  back  in  the  rowlocks,  splash 
sharply  and  go  swishing  back  again.  Margaret  lies 
back  on  cushions,  with  her  face  shaded  by  a  holland 
parasol,  and  I  sit  up  beside  her. 

"You  see,"  I  say,  and  in  spite  of  Margaret's  note 
of  perfect  acquiescence  I  feel  myself  reasoning  against 
an  indefinable  antagonism,  "  it  is  so  easy  to  fall  into  a 
slack  way  with  life.  There  may  seem  to  be  something 
priggish  in  a  meticulous  discipline,  but  otherwise  it  is 
so  easy  to  slip  into  indolent  habits — and  to  be  dis- 


MARGARET    IN    VENICE      227 

traded  from  one's  purpose.  The  country,  the  world, 
wants  men  to  serve  its  constructive  needs,  to  work  out 
and  carry  out  plans.  For  a  man  who  has  to  make  a 
living  the  enemy  is  immediate  necessity;  for  people 
like  ourselves  it's — it's  the  constant  small  opportunity 
of  agreeable  things/' 

"  Frittering  away,"   she  says,  "  time  and  strength." 

"  That  is  what  I  feel.  It's  so  pleasant  to  pretend 
one  is  simply  modest,  it  looks  so  foolish  at  times  to 
take  one's  self  too  seriously.  We've  got  to  take  our- 
selves seriously." 

She  endorses  my  words  with  her  eyes. 

"I  feel  I  can  do  great  things  with  life." 

"  I  know  you  can." 

'*  But  that's  only  to  be  done  by  concentrating  one's 
life  upon  one  main  end.  We  have  to  plan  our  days,  to 
make  everything  subserve  our  scheme." 

**  I  feel,"  she  answers  softly,  "  we  ought  to  give — 
every  hour." 

Her  face  becomes  dreamy.  "  I  want  to  give  every 
hour/'  she  adds. 

§2 

That  holiday  in  Venice  is  set  in  my  memory  like  a 
little  artificial  lake  in  uneven  confused  country,  as 
something  very  bright  and  skylike,  and  discontinuous 
with  all  about  it.  The  faded  quality  of  the  very  sun- 
shine of  that  season,  the  mellow  discoloured  palaces 
and  places,  the  huge,  time-ripened  paintings  of  departed 
splendours,  the  whispering,  nearly  noiseless  passage  of 
hearse-black  gondolas,  for  the  horrible  steam  launch 
had  not  yet  ruined  Venice,  the  stilled  magnificences  of 
the  depopulated  lagoons,  the  universal  autumn,  made 
me  feel  altogether  in  recess  from  the  teeming  uproars 
of  reality.  There  was  not  a  dozen  people  all  told,  no 


228      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

Americans  and  scarcely  any  English,  to  dine  in  the  big 
cavern  of  a  dining-room,,  with  its  vistas  of  separate 
tables,  its  distempered  walls  and  its  swathed  chande- 
liers. We  went  about  seeing  beautiful  things,  accept- 
ing beauty  on  every  hand,  and  taking  it  for  granted 
that  all  was  well  with  ourselves  and  the  world.  It  was 
ten  days  or  a  fortnight  before  I  became  fretful  and 
anxious  for  action;  a  long  tranquillity  for  such  a  tem- 
perament as  mine. 

Our  pleasures  were  curiously  impersonal,  a  succession 
of  shared  aesthetic  appreciation  threads  all  that  time. 
Our  honeymoon  was  no  exultant  coming  together,  no 
mutual  shout  of  "you!"  We  were  almost  shy  with 
one  another,  and  felt  the  relief  of  even  a  picture  to 
help  us  out.  It  was  entirely  in  my  conception  of  things 
that  I  should  be  very  watchful  not  to  shock  or  distress 
Margaret  or  press  the  sensuous  note.  Our  love-making 
had  much  of  the  tepid  smoothness  of  the  lagoons.  We 
talked  in  delicate  innuendo  of  what  should  be  glorious 
freedoms.  Margaret  had  missed  Verona  and  Venice  in 
her  previous  Italian  journey — fear  of  the  mosquito  had 
driven  her  mother  across  Italy  to  the  westward  route — 
and  now  she  could  fill  up  her  gaps  and  see  the  Titians 
and  Paul  Veroneses  she  already  knew  in  colourless 
photographs,  the  Carpaccios,  (the  St.  George  series 
delighted  her  beyond  measure,)  the  Basaitis  and  that 
great  statue  of  Bartolomeo  Colleoni  that  Ruskin 
praised. 

But  since  I  am  not  a  man  to  look  at  pictures  and 
architectural  effects  day  after  day,  I  did  watch  Mar- 
garet very  closely  and  store  a  thousand  memories  of 
her.  I  can  see  her  now,  her  long  body  drooping  a  lit- 
tle forward,  her  sweet  face  upraised  to  some  discovered 
familiar  masterpiece  and  shining  with  a  delicate  en- 
thusiasm. I  can  hear  again  the  soft  cadences  of  her 


MARGARET    IN    VENICE      229 

voice  murmuring  commonplace  comments,  for  she  had 
no  gift  of  expressing  the  shapeless  satisfaction  these 
things  gave  her. 

Margaret,  I  perceived,  was  a  cultivated  person,  the 
first  cultivated  person  with  whom  I  had  ever  come  into 
close  contact.  She  was  cultivated  and  moral,  and  I,  I 
now  realise,  was  never  either  of  these  things.  She  was 
passive,  and  I  am  active.  She  did  not  simply  and 
naturally  look  for  beauty  but  she  had  been  incited  to 
look  for  it  at  school,  and  took  perhaps  a  keener  interest 
in  books  and  lectures  and  all  the  organisation  of  beauti- 
ful things  than  she  did  in  beauty  itself;  she  found 
much  of  her  delight  in  being  guided  to  it.  Now  a 
thing  ceases  to  be  beautiful  to  me  when  some  finger 
points  me  out  its  merits.  Beauty  is  the  salt  of  life,  but 
I  take  my  beauty  as  a  wild  beast  gets  its  salt,  as  a  con- 
stituent of  the  meal.  .  .  . 

And  besides,  there  was  that  between  us  that  should 
have  seemed  more  beautiful  than  any  picture.  .  .  . 

So  we  went  about  Venice  tracking  down  pictures 
and  spiral  staircases  and  such-like  things,  and  my  brains 
were  busy  all  the  time  with  such  things  as  a  compari- 
son of  Venice  and  its  nearest  modern  equivalent,  New 
York,  with  the  elaboration  of  schemes  of  action  when 
we  returned  to  London,  with  the  development  of  a 
theory  of  Margaret. 

Our  marriage  had  done  this  much  at  least,  that  it 
had  fused  and  destroyed  those  two  independent  ways 
of  thinking  about  her  that  had  gone  on  in  my  mind 
hitherto.  Suddenly  she  had  become  very  near  to  me, 
and  a  very  big  thing,  a  sort  of  comprehensive  generali- 
sation behind  a  thousand  questions,  like  the  sky  or 
England.  The  judgments  and  understandings  that  had 
worked  when  she  was,  so  to  speak,  miles  away  from  my 
life,  had  now  to  be  altogether  revised.  Trifling  things 


230      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

began  to  matter  enormously,  that  she  had  a  weak  and 
easily  fatigued  back,  for  example,  or  that  when  she 
knitted  her  brows  and  stammered  a  little  in  talking, 
it  didn't  really  mean  that  an  exquisite  significance 
struggled  for  utterance. 

We  visited  pictures  in  the  mornings  chiefly.  In  the 
afternoon,  unless  we  were  making  a  day-long  excursion 
in  a  gondola,  Margaret  would  rest  for  an  hour  while  I 
prowled  about  in  search  of  English  newspapers,  and 
then  we  would  go  to  tea  in  the  Piazza  San  Marco  and 
watch  the  drift  of  people  feeding  the  pigeons  and  going 
into  the  little  doors  beneath  the  sunlit  arches  and 
domes  of  Saint  Mark's.  Then  perhaps  we  would  stroll 
on  the  Piazzetta,  or  go  out  into  the  sunset  in  a  gondola. 
Margaret  became  very  interested  in  the  shops  that 
abound  under  the  colonnades  and  decided  at  last  to 
make  an  extensive  purchase  of  table  glass.  "  These 
things,"  she  said,  "  are  quite  beautiful,  and  far  cheaper 
than  anything  but  the  most  ordinary  looking  English 
ware."  I  was  interested  in  her  idea,  and  a  good  deal 
charmed  by  the  delightful  qualities  of  tinted  shape, 
slender  handle  and  twisted  stem.  I  suggested  we 
should  get  not  simply  tumblers  and  wineglasses  but 
bedroom  waterbottles,  fruit-  and  sweet-dishes,  water- 
jugs,  and  in  the  end  we  made  quite  a  business-like 
afternoon  of  it. 

I  was  beginning  now  to  long  quite  definitely  for 
events.  Energy  was  accumulating  in  me,  and  worrying 
me  for  an  outlet.  I  found  the  Times  and  the  Daily 
Telegraph  and  the  other  papers  I  managed  to  get  hold 
of,  more  and  more  stimulating.  I  nearly  wrote  to  the 
former  paper  one  day  in  answer  to  a  letter  by  Lord 
Grimthorpe — I  forget  now  upon  what  point.  I  chafed 
secretly  against  this  life  of  tranquil  appreciations  more 
and  more.  I  found  my  attitudes  of  restrained  and 
delicate  affection  for  Margaret  increasingly  difficult  to 


MARGARET     IN    VENICE      231 

sustain.  I  surprised  myself  and  her  by  little  gusts  of 
irritability,  gusts  like  the  catspaws  before  a  gale.  I 
was  alarmed  at  these  symptoms. 

One  night  when  Margaret  had  gone  up  to  her  room, 
I  put  on  a  light  overcoat,  went  out  into  the  night  and 
prowled  for  a  long  time  through  the  narrow  streets, 
smoking  and  thinking.  I  returned  and  went  and  sat  on 
the  edge  of  her  bed  to  talk  to  her. 

"  Look  here,  Margaret,"  I  said ;  "  this  is  all  very 
well,  but  I'm  restless." 

"  Restless !  "  she  said  with  a  faint  surprise  in  her 
voice. 

"  Yes.  I  think  I  want  exercise.  I've  got  a  sort  of 
feeling — I've  never  had  it  before — as  though  I  was 
getting  fat." 

"My  dear!"  she  cried. 

"  I  want  to  do  things ; — ride  horses,  climb  mountains, 
take  the  devil  out  of  myself." 

She  watched  me  thoughtfully. 

"  Couldn't  we  do  something  ?  "  she  said. 

"  Do  what?  " 

"  I  don't  know.  Couldn't  we  perhaps  go  away  from 
here  soon — and  walk  in  the  mountains — on  our  way 
home." 

I  thought.  "  There  seems  to  be  no  exercise  at  all 
in  this  place." 

"  Isn't  there  some  walk?  " 

"  I  wonder,"  I  answered.  "  We  might  walk  to 
Chioggia  perhaps,  along  the  Lido."  And  we  tried  that, 
but  the  long  stretch  of  beach  fatigued  Margaret's  back, 
and  gave  her  blisters,  and  we  never  got  beyond 
3VIalamocco.  .  .  . 

A  day  or  so  after  we  went  out  to  those  pleasant 
black-robed,  bearded  Armenians  in  their  monastery  at 
Saint  Lazzaro,  and  returned  towards  sundown.  We 
fell  into  silence.  "  Piu  lento/'  said  Margaret  to  the 


232      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

gondolier,  and  released  my  accumulated  resolu- 
tion. 

"  Let  us  go  back  to  London/'  I  said  abruptly. 

Margaret  looked  at  me  with  surprised  blue  eyes. 

"  This  is  beautiful  beyond  measure,  you  know/'  I 
said,  sticking  to  my  point,  "  but  I  have  work  to  do." 

She  was  silent  for  some  seconds.  "  I  had  forgotten/' 
she  said. 

"  So  had  I,"  I  sympathised,  and  took  her  hand. 
"  Suddenly  I  have  remembered." 

She  remained  quite  still.  "  There  is  so  much  to  be 
done,"  I  said,  almost  apologetically. 

She  looked  long  away  from  me  across  the  lagoon 
and  at  last  sighed,  like  one  who  has  drunk  deeply,  and 
turned  to  me. 

"  I  suppose  one  ought  not  to  be  so  happy,"  she 
said.  "  Everything  has  been  so  beautiful  and  so  simple 
and  splendid.  And  clean.  It  has  been  just  With  You 
— the  time  of  my  life.  It's  a  pity  such  things  must 
end.  But  the  world  is  calling  you,  dear.  ...  I  ought 
not  to  have  forgotten  it.  I  thought  you  were  resting 
— and  thinking.  But  if  you  are  rested. — Would  you 
like  us  to  start  to-morrow  ?  " 

She  looked  at  once  so  fragile  and  so  devoted  that  on 
the  spur  of  the  moment  I  relented,  and  we  stayed  in 
Venice  four  more  days. 


CHAPTER  THE  FOURTH 

THE   HOUSE    IN   WESTMINSTER 

§  1 

MARGARET  had  already  taken  a  little  house  in  Radnor 
Square,  Westminster,  before  our  marriage,  a  house  that 
seemed  particularly  adaptable  to  our  needs  as  public- 
spirited  efficients;  it  had  been  very  pleasantly  painted 
and  papered  under  Margaret's  instructions,  white  paint 
and  clean  open  purples  and  green  predominating,  and 
now  we  set  to  work  at  once  upon  the  interesting 
business  of  arranging  and — with  our  Venetian  glass 
as  a  beginning — furnishing  it.  We  had  been  fairly 
fortunate  with  our  wedding  presents,  and  for  the  most 
part  it  was  open  to  us  to  choose  just  exactly  what  we 
would  have  and  just  precisely  where  we  would  put  it. 

Margaret  had  a  sense  of  form  and  colour  altogether 
superior  to  mine,  and  so  quite  apart  from  the  fact  that 
it  was  her  money  equipped  us,  I  stood  aside  from  all 
these  matters  and  obeyed  her  summons  to  a  consultation 
only  to  endorse  her  judgment  very  readily.  Until 
everything  was  settled  I  went  every  day  to  my  old 
rooms  in  Vincent  Square  and  worked  at  a  series  of 
papers  that  were  originally  intended  for  the  Fortnightly 
Review,  the  papers  that  afterwards  became  my  fourth 
book,  "  New  Aspects  of  Liberalism." 

I  still  remember  as  delightful  most  of  the  circum- 
stances of  getting  into  79,  Radnor  Square.  The  thin 
flavour  of  indecision  about  Margaret  disappeared  alto- 
gether in  a  shop;  she  had  the  precisest  ideas  of 
what  she  wanted,  and  the  devices  of  the  salesman  did 

233 


234      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

not  sway  her.  It  "was  very  pleasant  to  find  her  taking 
things  out  of  my  hands  with  a  certain  masterfulness, 
and  showing  the  distinctest  determination  to  make  a 
house  in  which  I  should  be  able  to  work  in  that  great 
project  of  "doing  something  for  the  world.'* 

"  And  I  do  want  to  make  things  pretty  about  us/' 
she  said.  "  You  don't  think  it  wrong  to  have  things 
pretty  ?  " 

"  I  want  them  so." 

"  Altiora  has  things  hard." 

"  Altiora/'  I  answered,  "  takes  a  pride  in  standing 
ugly  and  uncomfortable  things.  But  I  don't  see  that 
they  help  her.  Anyhow  they  won't  help  me." 

So  Margaret  went  to  the  best  shops  and  got  every- 
thing very  simple  and  very  good.  She  bought  some 
pictures  very  well  indeed;  there  was  a  little  Sussex 
landscape,  full  of  wind  and  sunshine,  by  Nicholson,  for 
my  study,  that  hit  my  taste  far  better  than  if  I  had 
gone  out  to  get  some  such  expression  for  myself. 

"  We  will  buy  a  picture  just  now  and  then/'  she 
said,  "sometimes — when  we  see  one." 

I  would  come  back  through  the  January  mire  or 
fog  from  Vincent  Square  to  the  door  of  79>  and  reach 
it  at  last  with  a  quite  childish  appreciation  of  the  fact 
that  its  solid  Georgian  proportions  and  its  fine  brass 
furnishings  belonged  to  my  home;  I  would  use  my  latch- 
key and  discover  Margaret  in  the  warm-lit,  spacious 
hall  with  a  partially  opened  packing-case,  fatigued  but 
happy,  or  go  up  to  have  tea  with  her  out  of  the  right 
tea  things,  "  come  at  last,"  or  be  told  to  notice  what 
was  fresh  there.  It  wasn't  simply  that  I  had  never 
had  a  house  before,  but  I  had  really  never  been,  ex- 
cept in  the  most  transitory  way,  in  any  house  that  was 
nearly  so  delightful  as  mine  promised  to  be.  Every- 
thing was  fresh  and  bright,  and  softly  and  harmoni- 
ously toned.  Downstairs  we  had  a  green  dining-room 


HOUSE     IN    WESTMINSTER     235 

with  gleaming  silver,  dark  oak,  and  English  colour- 
prints;  above  was  a  large  drawing-room  that  could  be 
made  still  larger  by  throwing  open  folding  doors,  and 
it  was  all  carefully  done  in  greys  and  blues,  for  the 
most  part  with  real  Sheraton  supplemented  by  Shera- 
ton so  skilfully  imitated  by  an  expert  Margaret  had 
discovered  as  to  be  indistinguishable  except  to  a  minute 
scrutiny.  And  for  me,  above  this  and  next  to  my  bed- 
room, there  was  a  roomy  study,  with  specially  thick 
stair-carpet  outside  and  thick  carpets  in  the  bedroom 
overhead  and  a  big  old  desk  for  me  to  sit  at  and  work 
between  fire  and  window,  and  another  desk  specially 
made  for  me  by  that  expert  if  I  chose  to  stand  and 
write,  and  open  bookshelves  and  bookcases  and  every 
sort  of  convenient  fitting.  There  were  electric  heaters 
beside  the  open  fire,  and  everything  was  put  for  me 
to  make  tea  at  any  time — electric  kettle,  infuser,  bis- 
cuits and  fresh  butter,  so  that  I  could  get  up  and  work 
at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  night.  I  could  do  no  work 
in  this  apartment  for  a  long  time,  I  was  so  interested 
in  the  perfection  of  its  arrangements.  And  when  I 
brought  in  my  books  and  papers  from  Vincent  Square, 
Margaret  seized  upon  all  the  really  shabby  volumes 
and  had  them  re-bound  in  a  fine  official-looking  leather. 

I  can  remember  sitting  down  at  that  desk  and  look- 
ing round  me  and  feeling  with  a  queer  effect  of  sur- 
prise that  after  all  even  a  place  in  the  Cabinet,  though 
infinitely  remote,  was  nevertheless  in  the  same  large 
world  with  these  fine  and  quietly  expensive  things. 

On  the  same  floor  Margaret  had  a  "  den,"  a  very 
neat  and  pretty  den  with  good  colour-prints  of  Botti- 
cellis  and  Carpaccios,  and  there  was  a  third  apartment 
for  sectarial  purposes  should  the  necessity  for  them 
arise,  with  a  severe-looking  desk  equipped  with  patent 
files.  And  Margaret  would  come  flitting  into  the  room 
to  me,  or  appear  noiselessly  standing,  a  tall  gracefully 


236      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

drooping  form,  in  the  wide  open  doorway.  "  Is  every* 
thing  right,  dear  ?  "  she  would  ask. 

"  Come  in,"  I  would  say,  "  I'm  sorting  out  papers." 

She  would  come  to  the  hearthrug. 

"  I  mustn't  disturb  you/'  she  would  remark. 

"I'm  not  busy  yet." 

"  Things  are  getting  into  order.  Then  we  must 
make  out  a  time-table  as  the  Baileys  do,  and  begin!  " 

Altiora  came  in  to  see  us  once  or  twice,  and  a  num- 
ber of  serious  young  wives  known  to  Altiora  called  and 
were  shown  over  the  house,  and  discussed  its  arrange- 
ments with  Margaret.  They  were  all  tremendously 
keen  on  efficient  arrangements. 

"  A  little  pretty,"  said  Altiora,  with  the  faintest  dis- 
approval, "  still " 

It  was  clear  she  thought  we  should  grow  out  of  that. 

From  the  day  of  our  return  we  found  other  peo- 
ple's houses  open  to  us  and  eager  for  us.  We  went 
out  of  London  for  week-ends  and  dined  out,  and  began 
discussing  our  projects  for  reciprocating  these  hospi- 
talities. As  a  single  man  unattached,  I  had  had  a  wide 
and  miscellaneous  social  range,  but  now  I  found  myself 
falling  into  place  in  a  set.  For  a  time  I  acquiesced  in 
this.  I  went  very  little  to  my  clubs,  the  Climax  and 
the  National  Liberal,  and  participated  in  no  bachelor 
dinners  at  all.  For  a  time,  too,  I  dropped  out  of  the 
garrulous  literary  and  journalistic  circles  I  had  fre- 
quented. I  put  up  for  the  Reform,  not  so  much  for 
the  use  of  the  club  as  a  sign  of  serious  and  substantial 
political  standing.  I  didn't  go  up  to  Cambridge,  I  re- 
member, for  nearly  a  year,  so  occupied  was  I  with  my 
new  adjustments. 

The  people  we  found  ourselves  among  at  this  time 
were  people,  to  put  it  roughly,  of  the  Parliamentary 
candidate  class,  or  people  already  actually  placed  in 
the  political  world.  They  ranged  between  very  con- 


HOUSE    IN    WESTMINSTER      237 

siderable  wealth  and  such  a  hard,  bare  independence  as 
old  Willersley  and  the  sister  who  kept  house  for  him 
possessed.  There  were  quite  a  number  of  young 
couples  like  ourselves,  a  little  younger  and  more  artless, 
or  a  little  older  and  more  established.  Among  the 
younger  men  I  had  a  sort  of  distinction  because  of  my 
Cambridge  reputation  and  my  writing,  and  because, 
unlike  them,  I  was  an  adventurer  and  had  won  and 
married  my  way  into  their  circles  instead  of  being  nat- 
urally there.  They  couldn't  quite  reckon  upon  what 
I  should  do;  they  felt  I  had  reserves  of  experience 
and  incalculable  traditions.  Close  to  us  were  the 
Cramptons,  Willie  Crampton,  who  has  since  been  Post- 
master-General, rich  and  very  important  in  Rockshire, 
and  his  younger  brother  Edward,  who  has  specialised 
in  history  and  become  one  of  those  unimaginative  men 
of  letters  who  are  the  glory  of  latter-day  England. 
Then  there  was  Lewis,  further  towards  Kensington, 
where  his  cousins  the  Solomons  and  the  Hartsteins 
lived,  a  brilliant  representative  of  his  race,  able,  in- 
dustrious and  invariably  uninspired,  with  a  wife  a  lit- 
tle in  revolt  against  the  racial  tradition  of  feminine 
servitude  and.  inclined  to  the  suffragette  point  of  view, 
and  Bunting  Harblow,  an  old  blue,  and  with  an  er- 
ratic disposition  well  under  the  control  of  the  able 
little  cousin  he  had  married.  I  had  known  all  these 
men,  but  now  (with  Altiora  floating  angelically  in  ben- 
ediction) they  opened  their  hearts  to  me  and  took  me 
into  their  order.  They  were  all  like  myself,  prospective 
Liberal  candidates,  with  a  feeling  that  the  period  of 
wandering  in  the  wilderness  of  opposition  was  draw- 
ing near  its  close.  They  were  all  tremendously  keen 
upon  social  and  political  service,  and  all  greatly  under 
the  sway  of  the  ideal  of  a  simple,  strenuous  life,  a 
life  finding  its  satisfactions  in  political  achievements 
and  distinctions.  The  young  wives  were  as  keen  about 


238      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

it  as  the  young  husbands,  Margaret  most  of  all,  and 
I — whatever  elements  in  me  didn't  march  with  the  at- 
titudes and  habits  of  this  set  were  very  much  in  the 
background  during  that  time. 

We  would  give  little  dinners  and  have  evening  gath- 
erings at  which  everything  was  very  simple  and  very 
good,  with  a  slight  but  perceptible  austerity,  and  there 
was  more  good  fruit  and  flowers  and  less  perhaps  in 
the  way  of  savouries,  patties  and  entrees  than  was 
customary.  Sherry  we  banished,  and  Marsala  and 
liqueurs,  and  there  was  always  good  home-made  lemon- 
ade available.  No  men  waited,  but  very  expert  par- 
lourmaids. Our  meat  was  usually  Welsh  mutton — I 
don't  know  why,  unless  that  mountains  have  ever  been 
the  last  refuge  of  the  severer  virtues.  And  we  talked 
politics  and  books  and  ideas  and  Bernard  Shaw  (who 
was  a  department  by  himself  and  supposed  in  those 
days  to  be  ethically  sound  at  bottom),  and  mingled 
with  the  intellectuals — I  myself  was,  as  it  were,  a  pro- 
moted intellectual. 

The  Cramptons  had  a  tendency  to  read  good  things 
aloud  on  their  less  frequented  receptions,  but  I  have 
never  been  able  to  participate  submissively  in  this 
hyper-digestion  of  written  matter,  and  generally  man- 
aged to  provoke  a  disruptive  debate.  We  were  all  very 
earnest  to  make  the  most  of  ourselves  and  to  be  and 
do,  and  I  wonder  still  at  times,  with  an  unassuaged 
perplexity,  how  it  is  that  in  that  phase  of  utmost  ear- 
nestness I  have  always  seemed  to  myself  to  be  most 
remote  from  reality. 

§  2 

I  look  back  now  across  the  detaching  intervention 
of  sixteen  crowded  years,  critically  and  I  fancy  almost 
impartially,  to  those  beginnings  of  my  married  life. 
I  try  to  recall  something  near  to  their  proper  order 


HOUSE   IN   WESTMINSTER     239 

the  developing  phases  of  relationship.  I  am  struck 
most  of  all  by  the  immense  unpremeditated,  generous- 
spirited  insincerities  upon  which  Margaret  and  I  were 
building. 

It  seems  to  me  that  here  I  have  to  tell  perhaps  the 
commonest  experience  of  all  among  married  educated 
people,  the  deliberate,  shy,  complex  effort  to  fill  the 
yawning  gaps  in  temperament  as  they  appear,  the  sus- 
tained, failing  attempt  to  bridge  abysses,  level  bar- 
riers, evade  violent  pressures.  I  have  come  these 
latter  years  of  my  life  to  believe  that  it  is  possible  for 
a  man  and  woman  to  be  absolutely  real  with  one  an- 
other, to  stand  naked  souled  to  each  other,  unashamed 
and  unafraid,  because  of  the  natural  all-glorifying  love 
between  them.  It  is  possible  to  love  and  be  loved  un- 
troubling,  as  a  bird  flies  through  the  air.  But  it  is  a 
rare  and  intricate  chance  that  brings  two  people  within 
sight  of  that  essential  union,  and  for  the  majority  mar- 
riage must  adjust  itself  on  other  terms.  Most  coupled 
people  never  really  look  at  one  another.  They  look  a 
little  away  to  preconceived  ideas.  And  each  from  the 
first  days  of  love-making  hides  from  the  other,  is  afraid 
of  disappointing,  afraid  of  offending,  afraid  of  dis- 
coveries in  either  sense.  They  build  not  solidly  upon 
the  rock  of  truth,  but  upon  arches  and  pillars  and  queer 
provisional  supports  that  are  needed  to  make  a  common 
foundation,  and  below  in  the  imprisoned  darknesses, 
below  the  fine  fabric  they  sustain  together  begins  for 
each  of  them  a  cavernous  hidden  life.  Down  there 
things  may  be  prowling  that  scarce  ever  peep  out  to 
consciousness  except  in  the  grey  half-light  of  sleepless 
nights,  passions  that  flash  out  for  an  instant  in  an 
angry  glance  and  are  seen  no  more,  starved  victims  and 
beautiful  dreams  bricked  up  to  die.  For  the  most  of 
us  there  is  no  jail  delivery  of  those  inner  depths,  and 
the  life  above  goes  on  to  its  honourable  end. 


240      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

I  have  told  how  I  loved  Margaret  and  how  I  came 
to  marry  her.  Perhaps  already  unintentionally  I  have 
indicated  the  quality  of  the  injustice  our  marriage  did 
us  both.  There  was  no  kindred  between  us  and  no 
understanding.  We  were  drawn  to  one  another  by  the 
unlikeness  of  our  quality,  by  the  things  we  misunder- 
stood in  each  other.  I  know  a  score  of  couples  who 
have  married  in  that  fashion. 

Modern  conditions  and  modern  ideas,  and  in  par- 
ticular the  intenser  and  subtler  perceptions  of  modern 
life,  press  more  and  more  heavily  upon  a  marriage  tie 
whose  fashion  comes  from  an  earlier  and  less  discrimi- 
nating time.  When  the  wife  was  her  husband's  sub- 
ordinate, meeting  him  simply  and  uncritically  for  sim- 
ple ends,  when  marriage  was  a  purely  domestic  rela- 
tionship, leaving  thought  and  the  vivid  things  of  life 
almost  entirely  to  the  unencumbered  man,  mental  and 
temperamental  incompatibilities  mattered  comparatively 
little.  But  now  the  wife,  and  particularly  the  loving 
childless  wife,  unpremeditatedly  makes  a  relentless  de- 
mand for  a  complete  association,  and  the  husband 
exacts  unthought  of  delicacies  of  understanding  and 
co-operation.  These  are  stupendous  demands,  Peo- 
ple not  only  think  more  fully  and  elaborately  about 
life  than  they  ever  did  before,  but  marriage  obliges  us 
to  make  that  ever  more  accidented  progress  a  three- 
legged  race  of  carelessly  assorted  couples.  .  .  . 

Our  very  mental  texture  was  different.  I  was  tough- 
minded,  to  use  the  phrase  of  William  James,  primary 
and  intuitive  and  illogical;  she  was  tender-minded,  log- 
ical, refined  and  secondary.  She  was  loyal  to  pledge 
and  persons,  sentimental  and  faithful;  I  am  loyal  to 
ideas  and  instincts,  emotional  and  scheming.  My  imagi- 
nation moves  in  broad  gestures;  hers  was  delicate  with 
a  real  dread  of  extravagance.  My  quality  is  sensuous 
and  ruled  by  warm  impulses;  hers  was  discriminating 


HOUSE   IN  WESTMINSTER      241 

and  essentially  inhibitory.  I  like  the  facts  of  the  case 
and  to  mention  everything;  I  like  naked  bodies  and 
the  jolly  smells  of  things.  She  abounded  in  reserva- 
tions, in  circumlocutions  and  evasions,  in  keenly  ap- 
preciated secondary  points.  Perhaps  the  reader  knows 
that  Tintoretto  in  the  National  Gallery,  the  Origin  of 
the  Milky  Way.  It  is  an  admirable  test  of  tempera- 
mental quality.  In  spite  of  my  early  training  I  have 
come  to  regard  that  picture  as  altogether  delightful; 
to  Margaret  it  has  always  been  "  needlessly  offensive." 
In  that  you  have  our  fundamental  breach.  She  had 
a  habit,  by  no  means  rare,  of  damning  what  she  did  not 
like  or  find  sympathetic  in  me  on  the  score  that  it  was 
not  my  "  true  self,"  and  she  did  not  so  much  accept  the 
universe  as  select  from  it  and  do  her  best  to  ignore  the 
rest.  And  also  I  had  far  more  initiative  than  had  she. 
This  is  no  catalogue  of  rights  and  wrongs,  or  superior- 
ities and  inferiorities;  it  is  a  catalogue  of  differences 
between  two  people  linked  in  a  relationship  that  con- 
stantly becomes  more  intolerant  of  differences. 

This  is  how  we  stood  to  each  other,  and  none  of  it 
was  clear  to  either  of  us  at  the  outset.  To  begin  with, 
I  found  myself  reserving  myself  from  her,  then  slowly 
apprehending  a  jarring  between  our  minds  and  what 
seemed  to  me  at  first  a  queer  little  habit  of  misunder- 
standing in  her.  .  .  . 

It  did  not  hinder  my  being  very  fond  of  her.  .    .   . 

Where  our  system  of  reservation  became  at  once 
most  usual  and  most  astounding  was  in  our  personal 
relations.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  in  that  regard 
we  never  for  a  moment  achieved  sincerity  with  one 
another  during  the  first  six  years  of  our  life  together. 
It  goes  even  deeper  than  that,  for  in  my  effort  to  real- 
ise the  ideal  of  my  marriage  I  ceased  even  to  attempt 
to  be  sincere  with  myself.  I  would  not  admit  my  own 
perceptions  and  interpretations.  J  tried  to  fit  myself 


242        THE  NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

to  her  thinner  and  finer  determinations.  There  are 
people  who  will  say  with  a  note  of  approval  that  I  was 
learning  to  conquer  myself.  I  record  that  much  with- 
out any  note  of  approval.  .  .  . 

For  some  years  I  never  deceived  Margaret  about 
any  concrete  fact  nor,  except  for  the  silence  about  my 
earlier  life  that  she  had  almost  forced  upon  me,  did  I 
hide  any  concrete  fact  that  seemed  to  affect  her,  but 
from  the  outset  I  was  guilty  of  immense  spiritual  con- 
cealments, my  very  marriage  was  based,  I  see  now,  on  a 
spiritual  subterfuge;  I  hid  moods  from  her,  pretended 
feelings.  .  .  . 

§  3 

The  interest  and  excitement  of  setting-up  a  house, 
of  walking  about  it  from  room  to  room  and  from  floor 
to  floor,  or  sitting  at  one's  own  dinner  table  and  watch- 
ing one's  wife  control  conversation  with  a  pretty,  timid 
resolution,  of  taking  a  place  among  the  secure  and  free 
people  of  our  world,  passed  almost  insensibly  into  the 
interest  and  excitement  of  my  Parliamentary  candida- 
ture for  the  Kinghamstead  Division,  tiiat  shapeless 
chunk  of  agricultural  midland  between  the  Great  West- 
ern and  the  North  Western  railways.  I  was  going  to 
*'  take  hold "  at  last,  the  Kinghamstead  Division  was 
my  appointed  handle.  I  was  to  find  my  place  in  the 
ratHer  indistinctly  sketched  constructions  that  were  im- 
plicit in  the  minds  of  all  our  circle.  The  precise  place 
I  had  to  fill  and  the  precise  functions  I  had  to  dis- 
charge were  not  as  yet  very  clear,  but  all  that,  we  felt 
sure,  would  become  plain  as  things  developed. 

A  few  brief  months  of  vague  activities  of  "  nurs- 
ing" gave  place  to  the  excitements  of  the  contest  that 
followed  the  return  of  Mr.  Campbell-Bannerman  to 
power  in  1906.  So  far  as  the  Kinghamstead  Division 
was  concerned  it  was  a  depressed  and  tepid  battle.  I 


HOUSE    IN    WESTMINSTER     243 

went  about  the  constituency  making  three  speeches  that 
were  soon  threadbare,  and  an  odd  little  collection  of 
people  worked  for  me;  two  solicitors,  a  cheap  photog- 
rapher, a  democratic  parson,  a  number  of  dissenting 
ministers,  the  Mayor  of  Kinghamstead,  a  Mrs.  Bulger, 
the  widow  of  an  old  Chartist  who  had  grown  rich 
through  electric  traction  patents,  Sir  Roderick  Newton, 
a  Jew  who  had  bought  Calersham  Castle,  and  old  Sir 
Graham  Rivers,  that  sturdy  old  soldier,  were  among 
my  chief  supporters.  We  had  headquarters  in  each 
town  and  village,  mostly  there  were  empty  shops  we 
leased  temporarily,  and  there  at  least  a  sort  of  fuss 
and  a  coming  and  going  were  maintained.  The  rest 
of  the  population  stared  in  a  state  of  suspended  judg- 
ment as  we  went  about  the  business.  The  country  was 
supposed  to  be  in  a  state  of  intellectual  conflict  and 
deliberate  decision,  in  history  it  will  no  doubt  figure 
as  a  momentous  conflict.  Yet  except  for  an  occasional 
flare  of  bill-sticking  or  a  bill  in  a  window  or  a  placard- 
plastered  motor-car  or  an  argumentative  group  of  peo- 
ple outside  a  public-house  or  a  sluggish  movement 
towards  the  schoolroom  or  village  hall,  there  was 
scarcely  a  sign  that  a  great  empire  was  revising  its 
destinies.  Now  and  then  one  saw  a  canvasser  on  a 
doorstep.  For  the  most  part  people  went  about  their 
business  with  an  entirely  irresponsible  confidence  in  the 
stability  of  the  universe.  At  times  one  felt  a  little 
absurd  with  one's  flutter  of  colours  and  one's  air  of 
saving  the  country. 

My  opponent  was  a  quite  undistinguished  Major- 
General  who  relied  upon  his  advocacy  of  Protection, 
and  was  particularly  anxious  we  should  avoid  "  person- 
alities "  and  fight  the  constituency  in  a  gentlemanly 
spirit.  He  was  always  writing  me  notes,  apologising 
for  excesses  on  the  part  of  his  supporters,  or  pointing 
out  the  undesirability  of  some  course  taken  by  mine. 


244      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

My  speeches  had  been  planned  upon  broad  lines,  but 
they  lost  touch  with  these  as  the  polling  approached. 
To  begin  with  I  made  a  real  attempt  to  put  what  was 
in  my  mind  before  the  people  I  was  to  supply  with  a 
political  voice.  I  spoke  of  the  greatness  of  our  empire 
and  its  destinies,  of  the  splendid  projects  and  possibil- 
ities of  life  and  order  that  lay  before  the  world,  of 
all  that  a  resolute  and  constructive  effort  might  do  at 
the  present  time  "  We  are  building  a  state,"  I  said, 
"  secure  and  splendid,  we  are  in  the  dawn  of  the  great 
age  of  mankind."  Sometimes  that  would  get  a  soli- 
tary "  'Ear !  'ear !  "  Then  having  created,  as  I  imag- 
ined, a  fine  atmosphere,  I  turned  upon  the  history  of 
the  last  Conservative  administration  and  brought  it 
into  contrast  with  the  wide  occasions  of  the  age;  dis- 
cussed its  failure  to  control  the  grasping  financiers  in 
South  Africa,  its  failure  to  release  public  education 
from  sectarian  squabbles,  its  misconduct  of  the  Boer 
War,  its  waste  of  the  world's  resources.  .  .  . 

It  soon  became  manifest  that  my  opening  and  my 
general  spaciousness  of  method  bored  my  audiences  a 
good  deal.  The  richer  and  wider  my  phrases  the  thin- 
ner sounded  my  voice  in  these  non-resonating  gather- 
ings. Even  the  platform  supporters  grew  restive  un- 
consciously, and  stirred  and  coughed.  They  did  not 
recognise  themselves  as  mankind.  Building  an  empire, 
preparing  a  fresh  stage  in  the  history  of  humanity,  had 
no  appeal  for  them.  They  were  mostly  everyday,  toil- 
ing people,  full  of  small  personal  solicitudes,  and  they 
came  to  my  meetings,  I  think,  very  largely  as  a  relaxa- 
tion. This  stuff  was  not  relaxing.  They  did  not  think 
politics  was  a  great  constructive  process,  they  thought 
it  was  a  kind  of  dog-fight.  They  wanted  fun;  they 
wanted  spice,  they  wanted  hits,  they  wanted  also  a 
chance  to  say  "  'Ear,  'ear !  "  in  an  intelligent  and  hon- 
ourable manner  and  claj)  their  hands  and  drum  with 


HOUSE    IN    WESTMINSTER     245 

their  feet.  The  great  constructive  process  in  history 
gives  so  little  scope  for  clapping  and  drumming  and 
saying  "  'Ear,  'ear ! "  One  might  as  well  think  of 
hounding  on  the  solar  system. 

So  after  one  or  two  attempts  to  lift  my  audiences 
to  the  level  of  the  issues  involved,  I  began  to  adapt 
myself  to  them.  I  cut  down  my  review  of  our  im- 
perial outlook  and  destinies  more  and  more,  and  devel- 
oped a  series  of  hits  and  anecdotes  and — what  shall 
I  call  them? — "  crudifications  "  of  the  issue.  My  help- 
ers congratulated  me  on  the  rapid  improvement  of  my 
platform  style.  I  ceased  to  speak  of  the  late  Prime 
Minister  with  the  respect  I  bore  him,  and  began  to  fall 
in  with  the  popular  caricature  of  him  as  an  artful 
rabbit-witted  person  intent  only  on  keeping  his  leader- 
ship, in  spite  of  the  vigorous  attempts  of  Mr.  Joseph 
Chamberlain  to  oust  him  therefrom.  I  ceased  to  qual- 
ify my  statement  that  Protection  would  make  food 
dearer  for  the  agricultural  labourer.  I  began  to  speak 
of  Mr.  Alfred  Lyttelton  as  an  influence  at  once  insane 
and  diabolical,  as  a  man  inspired  by  a  passionate  desire 
to  substitute  manacled  but  still  criminal  Chinese  for 
honest  British  labourers  throughout  the  world.  And 
when  it  came  to  the  mention  of  our  own  kindly  leader, 
of  Mr.  John  Burns  or  any  one  else  of  any  prominence 
at  all  on  our  side  I  fell  more  and  more  into  the  intona- 
tion of  one  who  mentions  the  high  gods.  And  I  had 
my  reward  in  brighter  meetings  and  readier  and  readier 
applause. 

One  goes  on  from  phase  to  phase  in  these  things. 

"After  all,"  I  told  myself,  "if  one  wants  to  get 
to  Westminster  one  must  follow  the  road  that  leads 
there,"  but  I  found  the  road  nevertheless  rather  un- 
expectedly distasteful.  "  When  one  gets  there,"  I  said, 
"then  it  is  one  begins." 

But    I    would    lie    awake    at   nights    with   that    sore 


246      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

throat  and  headache  and  fatigue  which  come  from 
speaking  in  ill-ventilated  rooms,  and  wondering  how 
far  it  was  possible  to  educate  a  whole  people  to  great 
political  ideals.  Why  should  political  work  always  rot 
down  to  personalities  and  personal  appeals  in  this  way? 
Life  is,  I  suppose,  to  begin  with  and  end  with  a  matter 
of  personalities,  from  personalities  all  our  broader  in- 
terests arise  and  to  personalities  they  return.  All  our 
social  and  political  effort,  all  of  it,  is  like  trying  to 
make  a  crowd  of  people  fall  into  formation.  The 
broader  lines  appear,  but  then  come  a  rush  and  excite- 
ment and  irrelevancy,  and  forthwith  the  incipient  order 
has  vanished  and  the  marshals  must  begin  the  work 
over  again ! 

My  memory  of  all  that  time  is  essentially  confusion. 
There  was  a  frightful  lot  of  tiresome  locomotion  in  it; 
for  the  Kinghamstead  Division  is  extensive,  abounding 
in  ill-graded  and  badly  metalled  cross-roads  and  vicious 
little  hills,  and  singularly  unpleasing  to  the  eye  in  a 
muddy  winter.  It  is  sufficiently  near  to  London  to 
have  undergone  the  same  process  of  ill-regulated  ex- 
pansion that  made  Bromstead  the  place  it  is.  Several 
of  it?  overgrown  villages  have  developed  strings  of 
factories  and  sidings  along  the  railway  lines,  and  there 
is  an  abundance  of  petty  villas.  There  seemed  to  be 
no  place  at  which  one  could  take  hold  of  more  than 
this  or  that  element  of  the  population.  Now  we  met 
in  a  meeting-house,  now  in  a  Masonic  Hall  or  Drill 
Hall;  I  also  did  a  certain  amount  of  open-air  speak- 
ing in  the  dinner  hour  outside  gas-works  and  groups 
of  factories.  Some  special  sort  of  people  was,  as  it 
were,  secreted  in  response  to  each  special  appeal.  One 
said  things  carefully  adjusted  to  the  distinctive  limita- 
tions of  each  gathering.  Jokes  of  an  incredible  silli- 
ness and  shallowness  drifted  about  us.  Our  advisers 
made  us  declare  that  if  we  were  elected  we  would  live 


HOUSE     IN     WESTMINSTER      247 

in  the  district,  and  one  hasty  agent  had  bills  printed, 
"  If  Mr.  Remington  is  elected  he  will  live  here."  The 
enemy  obtained  a  number  of  these  bills  and  stuck  them 
on  outhouses,  pigstyes,  dog-kennels;  you  cannot  imagine 
how  irksome  the  repetition  of  that  jest  became.  The 
vast  drifting  indifference  in  between  my  meetings  im- 
pressed me  more  and  more,  i  realised  the  vagueness 
of  my  own  plans  as  I  had  never  done  before  I  brought 
them  to  the  test  of  this  experience.  I  was  perplexed 
by  the  riddle  of  just  how  far  I  was,  in  any  sense  of 
the  word,  taking  hold  at  all,  how  far  I  wasn't  myself 
flowing  into  an  accepted  groove. 

Margaret  was  troubled  by  no  such  doubts.  She  was 
clear  I  had  to  go  into  Parliament  on  the  side  of  Lib- 
eralism and  the  light,  as  against  the  late  Government 
and  darkness.  Essential  to  the  memory  of  my  first 
contest,  is  the  memory  of  her  clear  bright  face,  very 
resolute  and  grave,  helping  me  consciously,  stead- 
fastly, with  all  her  strength.  Her  quiet  confidence, 
while  I  was  so  dissatisfied,  worked  curiously  towards 
the  alienation  of  my  sympathies.  I  felt  she  had  no 
business  to  be  so  sure  of  me.  I  had  moments  of  vivid 
resentment  at  being  thus  marched  towards  Parliament. 

I  seemed  now  always  to  be  discovering  alien  forces 
of  character  in  her.  Her  way  of  taking  life  diverged 
from  me  mere  and  more.  She  sounded  amazing,  inde- 
pendent notes.  She  bought  some  particularly  costly 
furs  for  the  campaign  that  roused  enthusiasm  when- 
ever she  appeared.  She  also  made  me  a  birthday  pres- 
ent in  November  of  a  heavily  fur-trimmed  coat  and 
this  she  would  make  me  remove  as  I  went  on  to  the 
platform,  and  hold  over  her  arm  until  I  was  ready  to 
resume  it.  It  was  fearfully  heavy  for  her  and  she 
liked  it  to  be  heavy  for  her.  That  act  of  servitude 
was  in  essence  a  towering  self-assertion.  I  would 
glance  sideways  while  some  chairman  floundered 


248      THE  NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

through  his  introduction  and  see  the  clear  blue  eye 
with  which  she  regarded  the  audience,  which  existed 
so  far  as  she  was  concerned  merely  to  return  me  to 
Parliament.  It  was  a  friendly  eye,  provided  they  were 
not  silly  or  troublesome.  But  it  kindled  a  little  at  the 
hint  of  a  hostile  question.  After  we  had  come  so  far 
and  taken  so  much  trouble! 

She  constituted  herself  the  dragoman  of  our  political 
travels.  In  hotels  she  was  serenely  resolute  for  the 
quietest  and  the  best,  she  rejected  all  their  proposals 
for  meals  and  substituted  a  severely  nourishing  dietary 
of  her  own,  and  even  in  private  houses  she  astonished 
me  by  her  tranquil  insistence  upon  special  comforts 
and  sustenance.  I  can  see  her  face  now  as  it  would 
confront  a  hostess,  a  little  intent,  but  sweetly  resolute 
and  assured. 

Since  our  marriage  she  had  read  a  number  of  polit- 
ical memoirs,  and  she  had  been  particularly  impressed 
by  the  career  of  Mrs.  Gladstone.  I  don't  think  it  oc- 
curred to  her  to  compare  and  contrast  my  quality  with 
that  of  Mrs.  Gladstone's  husband.  I  suspect  her  of 
a  deliberate  intention  of  achieving  parallel  results  by 
parallel  methods.  I  was  to  be  Gladstonised.  Gladstone 
it  appeared  used  to  lubricate  his  speeches  with  a  mix- 
ture— if  my  memory  serves  me  right — of  egg  beaten 
up  in  sherry,  and  Margaret  was  very  anxious  I  should 
take  a  leaf  from  that  celebrated  book.  She  wanted,  I 
know,  to  hold  the  glass  in  her  hand  while  I  was  speak- 
ing. 

But  here  I  was  firm.  "No,"  I  said,  very  decisively, 
"simply  I  won't  stand  that.  It's  a  matter  of  con- 
science. I  shouldn't  feel — democratic.  I'll  take  my 
chance  of  the  common  water  in  the  carafe  on  the  chair- 
man's table/' 

"  I  do  wish  you  wouldn't,"  she  said,  distressed.  .    .    , 

It  was  absurd  to  feel  irritated;  it  was  so  admirable 


HOUSE     IN    WESTMINSTER     249 

of  her,  a  little  childish,  infinitely  womanly  and  devoted 
and  fine — and  I  see  now  how  pathetic.  But  I  could 
not  afford  to  succumb  to  her.  I  wanted  to  follow  my 
own  leading,  to  see  things  clearly,  and  this  reassuring 
pose  of  a  high  destiny,  of  an  almost  terribly  efficient 
pursuit  of  a  fixed  end  when  as  a  matter  of  fact  I  had  a 
very  doubtful  end  and  an  aim  as  yet  by  no  means  fixed, 
was  all  too  seductive  for  dalliance.  .  .  . 

§  * 

And  into  all  these  things  with  the  manner  of  a  trifling 
and  casual  incident  comes  the  figure  of  Isabel  Rivers. 
My  first  impressions  of  her  were  of  a  rather  ugly  and 
ungainly,  extraordinarily  interesting  schoolgirl  with  a 
beautiful  quick  flush  under  her  warm  brown  skin,  who 
said  and  did  amusing  and  surprising  things.  When 
first  I  saw  her  she  was  riding  a  very  old  bicycle  down- 
hill with  her  feet  on  the  fork  of  the  frame — it  seemed 
to  me  to  the  public  danger,  but  afterwards  I  came  to 
understand  the  quality  of  her  nerve  better — and  on 
the  third  occasion  she  was  for  her  own  private  satis- 
faction climbing  a  tree.  On  the  intervening  occasion 
we  had  what  seems  now  to  have  been  a  long  sustained 
conversation  about  the  political  situation  and  the  books 
and  papers  I  had  written. 

I  wonder  if  it  was. 

What  a  delightful  mixture  of  child  and  grave  woman 
she  was  at  that  time,  and  how  little  I  reckoned  on  the 
part  she  would  play  in  my  life!  And  since  she  has 
played  that  part,  how  impossible  it  is  to  tell  now  of 
those  early  days !  Since  I  wrote  that  opening  para- 
graph to  this  section  my  idle  pen  has  been,  as  it  were, 
playing  by  itself  and  sketching  faces  on  the  blotting 
pad — one  impish  wizened  visage  is  oddly  like  little 
Bailey — and  I  have  been  thinking  cheek  on  fist  amidst 
a  limitless  wealth  of  memories.  She  sits  below  me 


350      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

$n  the  low  wall  under  the  olive  trees  with  our  little 
dbild  in  her  arms.  She  is  now  the  central  fact  in  my 
life.  It  still  seems  a  little  incredible  that  that  should 
be  so.  She  has  destroyed,  me  as  a  politician,  brought 
me  to  this  belated  rebeginning  of  life.  When  I  sit 
down  and  try  to  make  her  a  girl  again,  I  feel  like  the 
Arabian  fisherman  who  tried  to  put  the  genius  back 
into  the  pot  from  which  it  had  spread  gigantic  across 
the  skies.  .  .  . 

I  have  a  very  clear  vision  of  her  rush  downhill  past 
our  labouring  ascendant  car — my  colours  fluttered  from 
handle-bar  and  shoulder-knot — and  her  waving  hand 
and  the  sharp  note  of  her  voice.  She  cried  out  some- 
thing, I  don't  know  what,  some  greeting. 

"  What  a  pretty  girl !  "  said  Margaret. 

Parvill,  the  cheap  photographer,  that  industrious  or- 
ganiser for  whom  by  way  of  repayment  I  got  those 
magic  letters,  that  knighthood  of  the  underlings,  "  J. 
P."  was  in  the  car  with  us  and  explained  her  to  us. 
"  One  of  the  best  workers  you  have,"  he  said.  .  .  . 

And  tlhen  after  a  toilsome  troubled  morning  we  came3 
rather  cross  from  the  strain  of  sustained  amiability, 
to  Sir  Graham  Rivers'  house.  It  seemed  all  softness 
and  quiet — I  recall  dead  white  panelling  and  oval  mir- 
rors horizontally  set  and  a  marble  fireplace  between 
white  marble-blind  Homer  and  marble-blind  Virgil,  very 
grave  and  fine — and  how  Isabel  came  in  to  lunch  in 
a  shapeless  thing  like  a  blue  smock  that  made  her 
bright  quick-changing  face  seem  yellow  under  her  cloud 
of  black  hair.  Her  step-sister  was  there,  Miss  Gamer, 
to  whom  the  house  was  to  descend,  a  well-dressed  lady 
of  thirty,  amiably  disavowing  responsibility  for  Isabel 
in  every  phrase  and  gesture.  And  there  was  a  very 
pleasant  doctor,  an  Oxford  man,  who  seemed  on  ex- 
cellent terms  with  every  one.  It  was  manifest  that  he 
was  in  the  habit  of  sparring  with  the  girl,  but  on  this 


HOUSE    IN    WESTMINSTER     251 

occasion  she  wasn't  sparring  and  refused  to  be  teased 
into  a  display  in  spite  of  the  taunts  of  either  him  or 
her  father.  She  was,  they  discovered  with  rising  eye- 
brows, shy.  It  seemed  an  opportunity  too  rare  for 
them  to  miss.  They  proclaimed  her  enthusiasm  for 
me  in  a  way  that  brought  a  flush  to  her  cheek  and  a 
look  into  her  eye  between  appeal  and  defiance.  They 
declared  she  had  read  my  books,  which  I  thought  at 
the  time  was  exaggeration,  their  dry  political  quality 
was  so  distinctly  not  what  one  was  accustomed  to  re- 
gard as  schoolgirl  reading.  Miss  Gamer  protested  to 
protect  her,  "  When  once  in  a  blue  moon  Isabel  is  well- 
behaved.  .  .  .!" 

Except  for  these  attacks  I  do  not  remember  much 
of  the  conversation  at  table;  it  was,  I  know,  discursive 
and  concerned  with  the  sort  of  topographical  and  social 
and  electioneering  fact  natural  to  such  a  visit.  Old 
Rivers  struck  me  as  a  delightful  person,  modestly  un- 
conscious of  his  doubly-earned  V.  C.  and  the  plucky 
defence  of  Kardin-Bergat  that  won  his  baronetcy.  He 
was  that  excellent  type,  the  soldier  radical,  and  we 
began  that  day  a  friendship  that  was  only  ended  by 
his  death  in  the  hunting-field  three  years  later.  He 
interested  Margaret  into  a  disregard  of  my  plate  and 
the  fact  that  I  had  secured  the  illegal  indulgence  of 
Moselle.  After  lunch  we  went  for  coffee  into  another 
low  room,  this  time  brown  panelled  and  looking  through 
French  windows  on  a  red-walled  garden,  graceful  even 
in  its  winter  desolation.  And  there  the  conversation 
suddenly  picked  up  and  became  good.  It  had  fallen  to 
a  pause,  and  the  doctor,  with  an  air  of  definitely  throw- 
ing off  a  mask  and  wrecking  an  established  tranquillity, 
remarked :  "  Very  probably  you  Liberals  will  come  in, 
though  I'm  not  sure  you'll  come  in  so  mightily  as  you 
think,  but  what  you'll  do  when  you  do  come  in  passes 
my  comprehension." 


252      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

"  There's  good  work  sometimes,"  said  Sir  Graham, 
"  in  undoing." 

"  You  can't  govern  a  great  empire  by  amending  and 
repealing  the  Acts  of  your  predecessors/'  said  the  doc- 
tor. 

There  came  that  kind  of  pause  that  happens  when 
a  subject  is  broached  too  big  and  difficult  for  the  gath- 
ering. Margaret's  blue  eyes  regarded  the  speaker  with 
quiet  disapproval  for  a  moment,  and  then  came  to  me 
in  the  not  too  confident  hope  that  I  would  snub  him 
out  of  existence  with  some  prompt  rhetorical  stroke. 
A  voice  spoke  out  of  the  big  arm-chair. 

"We'll  do  things,"  said  Isabel. 

The  doctor's  eye  li«  with  the  joy  of  the  fisherman 
who  strikes  his  fish  at  last.  "  What  will  you  do  ?  "  he 
asked  her. 

"  Every  one  knows  we're  a  mixed  lot,"  said  Isabel. 

"Poor  old  chaps  like  me!"  interjected  the  general. 

"  But  that's  not  a  programme,"  said  the  doctor. 

"But  Mr.  Remington  has  published  a  programme," 
said  Isabel. 

The  doctor  cocked  half  an  eye  at  me. 

"  In  some  review,"  the  girl  went  on.  "  After  all, 
we're  not  going  to  elect  the  whole  Liberal  party  in  the 
Kinghamstead  Division.  I'm  a  Remington-ite !  " 

"  But  the  programme,"  said  the  doctor,  "  the 
programme " 

"In   front   of   Mr.   Remington!" 

"  Scandal  always  comes  home  at  last,"  said  the  doc- 
tor. "  Let  him  hear  the  worst." 

"  I'd  like  to  hear,"  I  said.  "  Electioneering  shatters 
convictions  and  enfeebles  the  mind." 

"  Not  mine,"  said  Isabel  stoutly.  "  I  mean . 

Well,  anyhow  I  take  it  Mr.  Remington  stands  for  con- 
structing a  civilised  state  out  of  this  muddle." 

"  This  muddle,"  protested  the  doctor  with  an  appeal 


HOUSE     IN    WESTMINSTER    253 

of  the  eye  to  the  beautiful  long  room  and  the  ordered 
garden  outside  the  bright  clean  windows. 

"Well,  that  muddle,  if  you  like!  There's  a  slum 
within  a  mile  of  us  already.  The  dust  and  blacks  get 
worse  and  worse,  Sissie  ?  " 

"  They  do,"  agreed  Miss  Gamer. 

"  Mr.  Remington  stands  for  construction,  order,  edu- 
cation, discipline." 

"  And  you  ?  "  said  the  doctor. 

"  I'm  a  good  Remington-ite." 

"  Discipline !  "  said  the  doctor. 

"  Oh !  "  said  Isabel.  "  At  times  one  has  to  be — 
Napoleonic.  They  want  to  libel  me,  Mr.  Remington. 
A  political  worker  can't  always  be  in  time  for  meals, 
can  she?  At  times  one  has  to  make — splendid 
cuts." 

Miss  Gamer  said  something  indistinctly. 

"  Order,  education,  discipline,"  said  Sir  Graham. 
"  Excellent  things !  But  I've  a  sort  of  memory — in 
my  young  days — we  talked  about  something  called 
liberty." 

"  Liberty  under  the  law,"  I  said,  with  an  unexpected 
approving  murmur  from  Margaret,  and  took  up  the 
defence.  "  The  old  Liberal  definition  of  liberty  was 
a  trifle  uncritical.  Privilege  and  legal  restrictions  are 
not  the  only  enemies  of  liberty.  An  uneducated,  un- 
derbred, and  underfed  propertyless  man  is  a  man  who 
has  lost  the  possibility  of  liberty.  There's  no  liberty 
worth  a  rap  for  him.  A  man  who  is  swimming  hope- 
lessly for  life  wants  nothing  but  the  liberty  to  get 
out  of  the  water;  he'll  give  every  other  liberty  for  it — 
until  he  gets  out." 

Sir  Graham  took  me  up  and  we  fell  into  a  discus- 
sion of  the  changing  qualities  of  Liberalism.  It  was 
a  good  give-and-take  talk,  extraordinarily  refreshing 
after  the  nonsense  and  crowding  secondary  issues  of 


254       THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

the  electioneering  outside.  We  all  contributed  more 
or  less  except  Miss  Gamer;  Margaret  followed  with 
knitted  brows  and  occasional  interjections.  "People 
won't  see  that,"  for  example,  and  "  It  all  seems  so 
plain  to  me."  The  doctor  showed  himself  clever  but 
unsubstantial  and  inconsistent.  Isabel  sat  back  with 
her  black  mop  of  hair  buried  deep  in  the  chair  looking 
quickly  from  face  to  face.  Her  colour  came  and  went 
with  her  vivid  intellectual  excitement;  occasionally  she 
would  dart  a  word,  usually  a  very  apt  word,  like  a 
lizard's  tongue  into  the  discussion.  I  remember  chiefly 
that  a  chance  illustration  betrayed  that  she  had  read 
Bishop  Burnet.  .  .  . 

After  that  it  was  not  surprising  that  Isabel  should 
ask  for  a  lift  in  our  car  as  far  as  the  Lurky  Committee 
Room,  and  that  she  should  offer  me  quite  sound  advice 
en  route  upon  the  intellectual  temperament  of  the 
Lurky  gasworkers. 

On  the  third  occasion  that  I  saw  Isabel  she  was,  as 
I  have  said,  climbing  a  tree — and  a  very  creditable 
tree — for  her  own  private  satisfaction.  It  was  a  lapse 
from  the  high  seriousness  of  politics,  and  I  perceived 
she  felt  that  I  might  regard  it  as  such  and  attach  too 
much  importance  to  it.  I  had  some  difficulty  in  re- 
assuring her.  And  it's  odd  to  note  now — it  has  never 
occurred  to  me  before — that  from  that  day  to  this  I 
do  not  think  I  have  ever  reminded  Isabel  of  that  en- 
counter. 

And  after  that  memory  she  seems  to  be  flickering 
about  always  in  the  election,  an  inextinguishable  flame; 
now  she  flew  by  on  her  bicycle,  now  she  dashed  into 
committee  rooms,  now  she  appeared  on  doorsteps  in 
animated  conversation  with  dubious  voters;  I  took 
every  chance  I  could  to  talk  to  her — I  had  never  met 
anything  like  her  before  in  the  world,  and  she  inter- 
ested me  immensely — and  before  the  polling  day  she 


HOUSE     IN    WESTMINSTER      255 

and    I    had    become,    in    the    frankest    simplicity,    fast 
friends.  .  .  . 

That,  I  think,  sets  out  very  fairly  the  facts  of  our 
early  relationship.  But  it  is  hard  to  get  it  true,  either 
in  form  or  texture,  because  of  the  bright,  translucent, 
coloured,  and  refracting  memories  that  come  between. 
One  forgets  not  only  the  tint  and  quality  of  thoughts 
and  impressions  through  that  intervening  haze,  one 
forgets  them  altogether.  I  don't  remember  now  that 
I  ever  thought  in  those  days  of  passionate  love  or  the 
possibility  of  such  love  between  us.  I  may  have  done 
so  again  and  again.  But  I  doubt  it  very  strongly.  I 
don't  think  I  ever  thought  of  such  aspects.  I  had  no 
more  sense  of  any  danger  between  us,  seeing  the  years 
and  things  that  separated  us,  than  I  could  have 
had  if  she  had  been  an  intelligent  bright-eyed  bird. 
Isabel  came  into  my  life  as  a  new  sort  of  thing;  she 
didn't  join  on  at ^  all  to  my  previous  experiences  of 
womanhood.  They  were  not,  as  I  have  laboured  to  ex- 
plain, either  very  wide  or  very  penetrating  experiences, 
on  the  whole,  "  strangled  dinginess "  expresses  them, 
but  I  do  not  believe  they  were  narrower  or  shallower 
than  those  of  many  other  men  of  my  class.  I  thought 
of  women  as  pretty  things  and  beautiful  things,  pretty 
rather  than  beautiful,  attractive  and  at  times  discon- 
certingly attractive,  often  bright  and  witty,  but,  because 
of  the  vast  reservations  that  hid  them  from  me,  want- 
ing, subtly  and  inevitably  wanting,  in  understanding. 
My  idealisation  of  Margaret  had  evaporated  insensibly 
after  our  marriage.  The  shrine  I  had  made  for  her 
in  my  private  thoughts  stood  at  last  undisguisedly 
empty.  But  Isabel  did  not  for  a  moment  admit  of 
either  idealisation  or  interested  contempt.  She  opened 
a  new  sphere  of  womanhood  to  me.  With  her  steady 
amber-brown  eyes,  her  unaffected  interest  in  impersonal 
things,  her  upstanding  waistless  blue  body,  her  energy, 


256      THE    NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

decision  and  courage,  she  seemed  rather  some  new  and 
infinitely  finer  form  of  boyhood  than  a  feminine 
creature,  as  I  had  come  to  measure  femininity.  She 
was  my  perfect  friend.  Could  I  have  foreseen,  had  my 
world  been  more  wisely  planned,  to  this  day  we  might 
have  been  such  friends. 

She  seemed  at  that  time  unconscious  of  sex,  thougu 
she  has  told  me  since  how  full  she  was  of  protesting 
curiosities  and  restrained  emotions.  She  spoke,  as 
indeed  she  has  always  spoken,  simply,  clearly,  and 
vividly;  schoolgirl  slang  mingled  with  words  that 
marked  ample  voracious  reading,  and  she  moved  quickly 
with  the  free  directness  of  some  graceful  young  animal. 
She  took  many  of  the  easy  freedoms  a  man  or  a  sister 
might  have  done  with  me.  She  would  touch  my  arm, 
lay  a  hand  on  my  shoulder  as  I  sat,  adjust  the  lapel  of 
a  breast-pocket  as  she  talked  to  me.  She  says  now  she 
loved  me  always  from  the  beginning.  I  doubt  if  there 
was  a  suspicion  of  that  in  her  mind  those  days.  I 
used  to  find  her  regarding  me  with  the  clearest,  steadiest 
gaze  in  the  world,  exactly  like  the  gaze  of  some  nice 
healthy  innocent  animal  in  a  forest,  interested,  inquir- 
ing, speculative,  but  singularly  untroubled.  .  .  . 

§   5 

Polling  day  came  after  a  last  hoarse  and  dingy 
crescendo.  The  excitement  was  not  of  the  sort  that 
makes  one  forget  one  is  tired  out.  The  waiting  for 
the  end  of  the  count  has  left  a  long  blank  mark  on  my 
memory,  and  then  everyone  was  shaking  my  hand  and 
repeating:  "Nine  hundred  and  seventy-six." 

My  success  had  been  a  foregone  conclusion  since  the 
afternoon,  but  we  all  behaved  as  though  we  had  not 
been  anticipating  this  result  for  hours,  as  though  any 
other  figures  but  nine  hundred  and  seventy-six  would 
have  meant  something  entirely  different.  "  Nine 


HOUSE     IN    WESTMINSTER     257 

hundred  and  seventy-six ! "  said  Margaret.  "  They 
didn't  expect  three  hundred." 

"  Nine  hundred  and  seventy-six,"  said  a  little  short 
man  with  a  paper.  "  It  means  a  big  turnover.  Two 
dozen  short  of  a  thousand,  you  know." 

A  tremendous  hullaboo  began  outside,  and  a  lot  of 
fresh  people  came  into  the  room. 

Isabel,  flushed  but  not  out  of  breath,  Heaven  knows 
where  she  had  sprung  from  at  that  time  of  night!  was 
running  her  hand  down  my  sleeve  almost  caressingly, 
with  the  innocent  bold  affection  of  a  girl.  "  Got  you 
in !  "  she  said.  "  It's  been  no  end  of  a  lark." 

"  And  now,"  said  I,  "  I  must  go  and  be  constructive." 

"  Now  you  must  go  and  be  constructive,"  she  said. 

"  You've  got  to  live  here,"  she  added. 

"By  Jove!  yes,"  I  said.  "We'll  have  to  house 
hunt." 

"  I  shall  read  all  your  speeches." 

She  hesitated. 

"  I  wish  I  was  you,"  she  said,  and  said  it  as  though 
it  was  not  exactly  the  thing  she  was  meaning  to  say. 

"  They  want  you  to  speak,"  said  Margaret,  with 
something  unsaid  in  her  face. 

"  You  must  come  out  with  me,"  I  answered,  putting 
my  arm  through  hers,  and  felt  someone  urging  me  to 
the  French  windows  that  gave  on  the  balcony. 

"  If  you  think "  she  said,  yielding  gladly 

"  Oh,  rather!  "  said  I. 

The  Mayor  of  Kinghamstead,  a  managing  little  man 
with  no  great  belief  in  my  oratorical  powers,  was  stick- 
ing his  face  up  to  mine. 

"  It's  all  over,"  he  said,  "  and  you've  won.  Say  all 
the  nice  things  you  can  and  say  them  plainly." 

I  turned  and  handed  Margaret  out  through  the 
window  and  stood  looking  over  the  Market-place, 
which  was  more  than  half  filled  with  swaying  people. 


258      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

The  crowd  set  up  a  roar  of  approval  at  the  sight  of  us, 
tempered  by  a  little  booing.  Down  in  one  corner  of 
the  square  a  fight  was  going  on  for  a  flag,  a  fight  that 
even  the  prospect  of  a  speech  could  not  instantly  check. 
"Speech!"  cried  voices,  "Speech!"  and  then  a  brief 
"  boo-oo-oo  "  that  was  drowned  in  a  cascade  of  shouts 
and  cheers.  The  conflict  round  the  flag  culminated  in 
the  smashing  of  a  pane  of  glass  in  the  chemist's  window 
and  instantly  sank  to  peace. 

"  Gentlemen  voters  of  the  Kinghamstead  Division," 
I  began. 

"  Votes  for  Women ! "  yelled  a  voice,  amidst 
laughter — the  first  time  I  remember  hearing  that 
memorable  war-cry. 

"  Three  cheers  for  Mrs.  Remington !  " 

"  Mrs.  Remington  asks  me  to  thank  you,"  I  said, 
amidst  further  uproar  and  reiterated  cries  of  "  Speech !  " 

Then  silence  came  with  a  startling  swiftness. 

Isabel  was  still  in  my  mind,  I  suppose.  "  I  shall  go 
to  Westminster,"  I  began.  I  sought  for  some  com- 
pelling phrase  and  could  not  find  one.  "  To  do  my 
share,"  I  went  on,  "  in  building  up  a  great  and  splendid 
civilisation." 

I  paused,  and  there  was  a  weak  gust  of  cheering, 
and  then  a  renewal  of  booing. 

"  This  election,"  I  said,  "  has  been  the  end  and  the 
beginning  of  much.  New  ideas  are  abroad " 

"  Chinese  labour,"  yelled  a  voice,  and  across  the 
square  swept  a  wildfire  of  hooting  and  bawling. 

It  is  one  of  the  few  occasions  when  I  quite  lost  my 
hold  on  a  speech.  I  glanced  sideways  and  saw  the 
Mayor  of  Kinghamstead  speaking  behind  his  hand  to 
Parvill.  By  a  happy  chance  Parvill  caught  my  eye. 

"What  do  they  want?"  I  asked. 

"Eh?" 

"What  do  they  want?" 


HOUSE     IN    WESTMINSTER     259 

"  Say  something  about  general  fairness — the  other 
side,"  prompted  Parvill,  flattered  but  a  little  surprised 
by  my  appeal.  I  pulled  myself  hastily  into  a  more 
popular  strain  with  a  gross  eulogy  of  my  opponent's 
good  taste. 

"  Chinese  labour ! "  cried  the  voice  again. 

"  You've  given  that  notice  to  quit,"  I  answered. 

The  Market-place  roared  delight,  but  whether  that 
delight  expressed  hostility  to  Chinamen  or  hostility  to 
their  practical  enslavement  no  student  of  the  General 
Election  of  1906  has  ever  been  able  to  determine.  Cer- 
tainly one  of  the  most  effective  posters  on  our  side 
displayed  a  hideous  yellow  face,  just  that  and  nothing 
more.  There  was  not  even  a  legend  to  it.  How  it 
impressed  the  electorate  we  did  not  know,  but  that  it 
impressed  the  electorate  profoundly  there  can  be  no 
disputing. 

§  6 

Kinghamstead  was  one  of  the  earliest  constitu* 
encies  fought,  and  we  came  back — it  must  have  been 
Saturday — triumphant  but  very  tired,  to  our  house  in 
Radnor  Square.  In  the  train  we  read  the  first  intima- 
tions that  the  victory  of  our  party  was  likely  to  be  a 
sweeping  one. 

Then  came  a  period  when  one  was  going  about 
receiving  and  giving  congratulations  and  watching  the 
other  men  arrive,  very  like  a  boy  who  has  returned  to 
school  with  the  first  batch  after  the  holidays.  The 
London  world  reeked  with  the  General  Election;  it  had 
invaded  the  nurseries.  All  the  children  of  one's  friends 
had  got  big  maps  of  England  cut  up  into  squares  to 
represent  constituencies  and  were  busy  sticking  gummed 
blue  labels  over  the  conquered  red  of  Unionism  that 
had  hitherto  submerged  the  country.  And  there  were 
also  orange  labels,  if  I  remember  rightly,  to  represent 


260      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

the  new  Labour  party,  and  green  for  the  Irish.  I 
engaged  myself  to  speak  at  one  or  two  London  meet- 
ings, and  lunched  at  the  Reform,  which  was  fairly 
tepid,  and  dined  and  spent  one  or  two  tumultuous 
evenings  at  the  National  Liberal  Club,  which  was 
in  active  eruption.  The  National  Liberal  became 
feverishly  congested  towards  midnight  as  the  results  of 
the  counting  came  dropping  in.  A  big  green-baize 
screen  had  been  fixed  up  at  one  end  of  the  large  smok- 
ing-room with  the  names  of  the  constituencies  that 
were  voting  that  day,  and  directly  the  figures  came  to 
hand,  up  they  went,  amidst  cheers  that  at  last  lost 
their  energy  through  sheer  repetition,  whenever  there 
was  record  of  a  Liberal  gain.  I  don't  remember  what 
happened  when  there  was  a  Liberal  loss;  I  don't  think 
that  any  were  announced  while  I  was  there. 

How  packed  and  noisy  the  place  was,  and  what  a 
reek  of  tobacco  and  whisky  fumes  we  made!  Every- 
body was  excited  and  talking,  making  waves  of  harsh 
confused  sound  that  beat  upon  one's  ears,  and  every 
now  and  then  hoarse  voices  would  shout  for  someone 
to  speak.  Our  little  set  was  much  in  evidence.  Both 
the  Cramptons  were  in,  Lewis,  Bunting  Harblow. 
We  gave  brief  addresses  attuned  to  this  excitement  and 
the  late  hour,  amidst  much  enthusiasm. 

"  Now  we  can  do  things ! "  I  said  amidst  a  rapture 
of  applause.  Men  I  did  not  know  from  Adam  held  up 
glasses  and  nodded  to  me  in  solemn  fuddled  approval 
as  I  came  down  past  them  into  the  crowd  again. 

Men  were  betting  whether  the  Unionists  would  lose 
more  or  less  than  two  hundred  seats. 

"  I  wonder  j  ust  what  we  shall  do  with  it  all,"  I 
heard  one  sceptic  speculating.  .  .  . 

After  these  orgies  I  would  get  home  very  tired  and 
excited,  and  find  it  difficult  to  get  to  sleep.  I  would 
lie  and  speculate  about  what  it  was  we  were  going  to 


HOUSE     IN    WESTMINSTER     261 

do.  One  hadn't  anticipated  quite  such  a  tremendous 
accession  to  power  for  one's  party.  Liberalism  was 
swirling  in  like  a  flood.  .  .  . 

I  found  the  next  few  weeks  very  unsatisfactory  a 
distressing.  I  don't  clearly  remember  what  it  was  I 
had  expected;  I  suppose  the  fuss  and  strain  of  the 
General  Election  had  built  up  a  feeling  that  my  return 
would  in  some  way  put  power  into  my  hands,  and 
instead  I  found  myself  a  mere  undistinguished  unit  in 
a  vast  but  rather  vague  majority.  There  were  moments 
when  I  felt  very  distinctly  that  a  majority  could  be 
too  big  a  crowd  altogether.  I  had  all  my  work  still 
before  me,  I  had  achieved  nothing  as  yet  but  oppor- 
tunity, and  a  very  crowded  opportunity  it  was  at  that. 
Everyone  about  me  was  chatting  Parliament  and 
appointments;  one  breathed  distracting  and  irritating 
speculations  as  to  what  would  be  done  and  who  would 
be  asked  to  do  it.  I  was  chiefly  impressed  by  what 
was  unlikely  to  be  done  and  by  the  absence  of  any 
general  plan  of  legislation  to  hold  us  all  together.  I 
found  the  talk  about  Parliamentary  procedure  and 
etiquette  particularly  trying.  We  dined  with  the 
elder  Cramptons  one  evening,  and  old  Sir  Edward  was 
lengthily  sage  about  what  the  House  liked,  what  it 
didn't  like,  what  made  a  good  impression  and  what  a 
bad  one.  "A  man  shouldn't  speak  more  than  twice 
in  his  first  session,  and  not  at  first  on  too  contentious 
a  topic,"  said  Sir  Edward.  "  No." 

"  Very  much  depends  on  manner.  The  House  hates 
a  lecturer.  There's  a  sort  of  airy  earnestness " 

He  waved  his  cigar  to  eke  out  his  words. 

"  Little  peculiarities  of  costume  count  for  a  great 
deal.  I  could  name  one  man  who  spent  three  years 
living  down  a  pair  of  spatterdashers.  On  the  other 
hand — a  thing  like  that — if  it  catches  the  eye  of  the 
Punch  man,  for  example,  may  be  your  making." 


262      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

He  went  off  into  a  lengthy  speculation  of  why  the 
House  had  come  to  like  an  originally  unpopular  Irish- 
man named  Biggar.  .  ,  . 

The  opening  of  Parliament  gave  me  some  peculiar 
moods.  I  began  to  feel  more  and  more  like  a  branded 
sheep.  We  were  sworn  in  in  batches,  dozens  and  scores 
of  fresh  men,  trying  not  to  look  too  fresh  under  the 
inspection  of  policemen  and  messengers,  all  of  us  carry- 
ing new  silk  hats  and  wearing  magisterial  coats.  It  is 
one  of  my  vivid  memories  from  this  period,  the  sudden 
outbreak  of  silk  hats  in  the  smoking-room  of  the 
National  Liberal  Club.  At  first  I  thought  there  must 
have  been  a  funeral.  Familiar  faces  that  one  had 
grown  to  know  under  soft  felt  hats,  under  bowlers, 
under  liberal-minded  wide  brims,  and  above  artistic 
ties  and  tweed  jackets,  suddenly  met  one,  staring  with 
the  stern  gaze  of  self-consciousness,  from  under  silk 
hats  of  incredible  glossiness.  There  was  a  disposition 
to  wear  the  hat  much  too  forward,  I  thought,  for  a  good 
Parliamentary  style. 

There  was  much  play  with  the  hats  all  through;  a 
tremendous  competition  to  get  in  first  and  put  hats  on 
'coveted  seats.  A  memory  hangs  about  me  of  the 
House  in  the  early  afternoon,  an  inhumane  desolation 
inhabited  almost  entirely  by  silk  hats.  The  current 
use  of  cards  to  secure  seats  came  later.  There  were 
yards  and  yards  of  empty  green  benches  with  hats  and 
hats  and  hats  distributed  along  them,  resolute-looking 
top  hats,  lax  top  hats  with  a  kind  of  shadowy  grin 
under  them,  sensible  top  hats  brim  upward,  and  one 
scandalous  incontinent  that  had  rolled  from  the  front 
Opposition  bench  right  to  the  middle  of  the  floor.  A 
headless  hat  is  surely  the  most  soulless  thing  in  the 
world,  far  worse  even  than  a  skull.  .  .  . 

At  last,  in  a  leisurely  muddled  manner  we  got  to 
the  Address;  and  I  found  myself  packed  in  a  dense 


HOUSE     IN    WESTMINSTER    263 

elbowing  crowd  to  the  right  of  the  Speaker's  chair; 
while  the  attenuated  Opposition,  nearly  leaderless  after 
the  massacre,  tilted  its  brim  to  its  nose  and  sprawled  at 
its  ease  amidst  its  empty  benches. 

There  was  a  tremendous  hullaboo  about  something,, 
and  I  craned  to  see  over  the  shoulder  of  the  man  in 
front.  "  Order,  order,  order !  " 

"What's  it  about?"  I  asked. 

The  man  in  front  of  me  was  clearly  no  better 
informed,  and  then  I  gathered  from  a  slightly  con- 
temptuous Scotchman  beside  me  that  it  was  Chris 
Robinson  had  walked  between  the  honourable  member 
in  possession  of  the  house  and  the  Speaker.  I  caught 
a  glimpse  of  him  blushingly  whispering  about  his  mis- 
adventure to  a  colleague.  He  was  just  that  same  little 
figure  I  had  once  assisted  to  entertain  at  Cambridge, 
but  grey-haired  now,  and  still  it  seemed  with  the  same 
knitted  muffler  he  had  discarded  for  a  reckless  half- 
liour  while  he  talked  to  us  in  Hatherleigh's  rooms. 

It  dawned  upon  me  that  I  wasn't  particularly 
wanted  in  the  House,  and  that  I  should  get  all  I  needed 
of  the  opening  speeches  next  day  from  the  Times. 

I  made  my  way  out  and  was  presently  walking 
rather  aimlessly  through  the  outer  lobby. 

I  caught  myself  regarding  the  shadow  that  spread 
itself  out  before  me,  multiplied  itself  in  blue  tints  of 
various  intensity,  shuffled  itself  like  a  pack  of  cards 
under  the  many  lights,  the  square  shoulders,  the  silk 
hat,  already  worn  with  a  parliamentary  tilt  backward; 
I  found  I  was  surveying  this  statesmanlike  outline  with 
a  weak  approval.  "  A  member!  "  I  felt  the  little  clus- 
ter of  people  that  were  scattered  about  the  lobby  mus 
be  saying. 

"  Good  God !  "  I  said  in  hot  reaction,  "  what  am  I 
doing  here?  " 

It   was    one   of   those    moments    infinitely   trivial   in 


264      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

themselves,  that  yet  are  cardinal  in  a  man's  life.  It 
came  to  me  with  extreme  vividness  that  it  wasn't  so 
much  that  I  had  got  hold  of  something  as  that  some- 
thing had  got  hold  of  me.  I  distinctly  recall  the  re- 
bound of  my  mind.  Whatever  happened  in  this  Par- 
liament, I  at  least  would  attempt  something.  "  By 
God !  "  I  said,  "  I  won't  be  overwhelmed.  I  am  here 
to  do  something,  and  do  something  I  will !  " 

But  I  felt  that  for  the  moment  I  could  not  remain 
in  the  House. 

I  went  out  by  myself  with  my  thoughts  into  the 
night.  It  was  a  chilling  night,  and  rare  spots  of  rain 
were  falling.  I  glanced  over  my  shoulder  at  the  lit 
windows  of  the  Lords.  I  walked,  I  remember,  west- 
ward, and  presently  came  to  the  Grosvenar  Embank- 
ment and  followed  it,  watching  the  glittering  black  rush 
of  the  river  and  the  dark,  dimly  lit  barges  round  which 
the  water  swirled.  Across  the  river  was  the  hunched 
sky-line  of  Doulton's  potteries,  and  a  kiln  flared  redly. 
Dimly  luminous  trams  were  gliding  amidst  a  dotted 
line  of  lamps,  and  two  little  trains  crawled  into  Water- 
loo station.  Mysterious  black  figures  came  by  me  and 
were  suddenly  changed  to  the  commonplace  at  the  touch 
of  the  nearer  lamps.  It  was  a  big  confused  world,  I 
felt,  for  a  man  to  lay  his  hands  upon. 

I  remember  I  crossed  Vauxhall  Bridge  and  stood  for 
a  time  watching  the  huge  black  shapes  in  the  darkness 
under  the  gas-works.  A  shoal  of  coal  barges  lay  in- 
distinctly on  the  darkly  shining  mud  and  water  below,, 
and  a  colossal  crane  was  perpetually  hauling  up  coal 
into  mysterious  blacknesses  above,  and  dropping  the 
empty  clutch  back  to  the  barges.  Just  one  or  two 
minute  black  featureless  figures  of  men  toiled  amidst 
these  monster  shapes.  They  did  not  seem  to  be  con- 
trolling them  but  only  moving  about  among  them. 
These  gas-works  have  a  big  chimney  that  belches  a 


HOUSE     IN    WESTMINSTER     265 

lurid  flame  into  the  night,  a  livid  shivering  bluish  flame, 
shot  with  strange  crimson  streaks.   .  .  . 

On  the  other  side  of  Lambeth  Bridge  broad  stairs 
go  down  to  the  lapping  water  of  the  river;  the  lower 
steps  are  luminous  under  the  lamps  and  one  treads  un- 
warned into  thick  soft  Thames  mud.  They  seem  to 
be  purely  architectural  steps,  they  lead  nowhere,  they 
have  an  air  of  absolute  indifference  to  mortal  ends. 

Those  shapes  and  large  inhuman  places — for  all  of 
mankind  that  one  sees  at  night  about  Lambeth  is 
minute  and  pitiful  beside  the  industrial  monsters  that 
snort  and  toil  there — mix  up  inextricably  with  my 
memories  of  my  first  days  as  a  legislator.  Black 
figures  drift  by  me,  heavy  vans  clatter,  a  newspaper 
rough  tears  by  on  a  motor  bicycle,  and  presently,  on 
the  Albert  Embankment,  every  seat  has  its  one  or  two 
outcasts  huddled  together  and  slumbering. 

"  These  things  come,  these  things  go,"  a  whispering 
voice  urged  upon  me,  "  as  once  those  vast  unmeaning 
Saurians  whose  bones  encumber  museums  came  and 
went  rejoicing  noisily  in  fruitless  lives."  .  .  . 

Fruitless  lives ! — was  that  the  truth  of  it  all  ?   .  .   . 

Later  I  stood  within  sight  of  the  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment in  front  of  the  colonnades  of  St.  Thomas's  Hos- 
pital. I  leant  on  the  parapet  close  by  a  lamp-stand  of 
twisted  dolphins — and  I  prayed! 

I  remember  the  swirl  of  the  tide  upon  the  water, 
and  how  a  string  of  barges  presently  came  swinging 
and  bumping  round  as  high-water  turned  to  ebb. 
That  sudden  change  of  position  and  my  brief  per- 
plexity at  it,  sticks  like  a  paper  pin  through  the 
substance  of  my  thoughts.  It  was  then  I  was  moved 
to  prayer.  I  prayed  that  night  that  life  might  not  be 
in  vain,  that  in  particular  I  might  not  live  in  vain.  I 
prayed  for  strength  and  faith,  that  the  monstrous 
blundering  forces  in  life  might  not  overwhelm  me, 


266      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

might  not  beat  me  back  to  futility  and  a  meaningless 
acquiescence  in  existent  things.  I  knew  myself  for  the 
weakling  I  was,  I  knew  that  nevertheless  it  was  set  for 
me  to  make  such  order  as  I  could  out  of  these  disorders, 
and  my  task  cowed  me,  gave  me  at  the  thought  of  it  a 
sense  of  yielding  feebleness. 

"  Break  me,  O  God,"  I  prayed  at  last,  "  disgrace  me, 
torment  me,  destroy  me  as  you  will,  but  save  me  from 
self-complacency  and  little  interests  and  little  successes 
and  the  life  that  passes  like  the  shadow  of  a  dream." 


BOOK    THE    THIRD 
THE    HEART    OF    POLITICS 


CHAPTER  THE  FIRST 

THE    RIDDLE   FOR   THE   STATESMAN 


I  HAVE  been  planning  and  replanning,  writing  and  re- 
writing, this  next  portion  of  my  book  for  many  days. 
I  perceive  I  must  leave  it  raw  edged  and  ill  joined. 
I  have  learnt  something  of  the  impossibility  of  His- 
tory. For  all  I  have  had  to  tell  is  the  story  of  one 
man's  convictions  and  aims  and  how  they  reacted  upon 
his  life;  and  I  find  it  too  subtle  and  involved  and  in- 
tricate for  the  doing.  I  find  it  taxes  all  my  powers  to 
convey  even  the  main  forms  and  forces  in  that  devel- 
opment. It  is  like  looking  through  moving  media  of 
changing  hue  and  variable  refraction  at  something 
vitally  unstable.  Broad  theories  and  generalisations 
are  mingled  with  personal  influences,  with  prevalent 
prejudices;  and  not  only  coloured  but  altered  by  phases 
of  hopefulness  and  moods  of  depression.  The  web  is 
made  up  of  the  most  diverse  elements,  beyond  treat- 
ment multitudinous.  .  .  .  For  a  week  or  so  I  desisted 
altogether,  and  walked  over  the  mountains  and  re- 
turned to  sit  through  the  warm  soft  mornings  among 
the  shaded  rocks  above  this  little  perched-up  house  of 
ours,  discussing  my  difficulties  with  Isabel  and  I  think 
on  the  whole  complicating  them  further  in  the  effort 
to  simplify  them  to  manageable  and  stateable  elements. 
Let  me,  nevertheless,  attempt  a  rough  preliminary 
analysis  of  this  confused  process.  A  main  strand  is 
quite  easily  traceable.  This  main  strand  is  the  story  of 
my  obvious  life,  my  life  as  it  must  have  looked  to  most 


270      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

of  my  acquaintances.  It  presents  you  with  a  young 
couple,  bright,  hopeful,  and  energetic,  starting  out 
under  Altiora's  auspices  to  make  a  career.  You  figure 
us  well  dressed  and  active,  running  about  in  motor-cars, 
visiting  in  great  people's  houses,  dining  amidst  brilliant 
companies,  going  to  the  theatre,  meeting  in  the  lobby. 
(Margaret  wore  hundreds  of  beautiful  dresses.  We 
must  have  had  an  air  of  succeeding  meritoriously  during 
that  time. 

We  did  very  continually  and  faithfully  serve  our 
joint  career.  I  thought  about  it  a  great  deal,  and  did 
and  refrained  from  doing  ten  thousand  things  for  the 
sake  of  it.  I  kept  up  a  solicitude  for  it,  as  it  were  by 
inertia,  long  after  things  had  happened  and  changes 
occurred  in  me  that  rendered  its  completion  impossible. 
Under  certain  very  artless  pretences,  we  wanted  stead- 
fastly to  make  a  handsome  position  in  the  world, 
achieve  respect,  succeed.  Enormous  unseen  changes 
had  been  in  progress  for  years  in  my  mind  and  the 
realities  of  my  life,  before  our  general  circle  could  have 
had  any  inkling  of  their  existence,  or  suspected  the 
appearances  of  our  life.  Then  suddenly  our  proceed- 
ings began  to  be  deflected,  our  outward  unanimity  visi- 
bly strained  and  marred  by  the  insurgence  of  these  so 
long-hidden  developments. 

That  career  had  its  own  hidden  side,  of  course;  but 
when  I  write  of  these  unseen  factors  I  do  not  mean 
that  but  something  altogether  broader.  I  do  not  mean 
the  everyday  pettinesses  which  gave  the  cynical  ob- 
server scope  and  told  of  a  narrower,  baser  aspect 
of  the  fair  but  limited  ambitions  of  my  ostensible 
self.  This  "  sub-careerist  "  element  noted  little  things 
that  affected  the  career,  made  me  suspicious  of  the 
rivalry  of  so-and-so,  propitiatory  to  so-^^xl-so,  whom, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  I  didn't  respect  or  feel  in  the  least 
sympathetic  towards;  guarded  with  that  man,  who  for 


RIDDLE     FOR     STATESMAN      271 

all  his  charm  and  interest  wasn't  helpful,  and  a  little 
touchy  at  the  appearance  of  neglect  from  that.  No, 
I  mean  something  greater  and  not  something  smaller 
when  I  write  of  a  hidden  life. 

In  the  ostensible  self  who  glowed  under  the  appro- 
bation of  Altiora  Bailey,  and  was  envied  and  discussed, 
praised  and  depreciated,  in  the  House  and  in  smoking- 
room  gossip,  you  really  have  as  much  of  a  man  as 
usually  figures  in  a  novel  or  an  obituary  notice.  But  I 
am  tremendously  impressed  now  in  the  retrospect  by 
the  realisation  of  how  little  that  frontage  represented 
me,  and  just  how  little  such  frontages  do  represent  the 
complexities  of  the  intelligent  contemporary.  Behind 
it,  yet  struggling  to  disorganise  and  alter  it,  altogether, 
was  a  far  more  essential  reality,  a  self  less  personal, 
less  individualised,  and  broader  in  its  references.  Its 
aims  were  never  simply  to  get  on;  it  had  an  altogether 
different  system  of  demands  and  satisfactions.  It  was 
critical,  curious,  more  than  a  little  unfeeling — and  re- 
lentlessly illuminating. 

It  is  just  the  existence  and  development  of  this  more 
generalised  self-behind-the-frontage  that  is  making 
modern  life  so  much  more  subtle  and  intricate  to  ren- 
der, and  so  much  more  hopeful  in  its  relations  to  the 
perplexities  of  the  universe.  I  see  this  mental  and 
spiritual  hinterland  vary  enormously  in  the  people  about 
me,  from  a  type  which  seems  to  keep,  as  people  say, 
all  its  goods  in  the  window,  to  others  who,  like  myself, 
come  to  regard  the  ostensible  existence  more  and  more 
as  a  mere  experimental  feeder  and  agent  for  that 
greater  personality  behind.  And  this  back-self  has  its 
history  of  phases,  its  crises  and  happy  accidents  and 
irrevocable  conclusions,  more  or  less  distinct  from  the 
adventures  and  achievements  of  the  ostensible  self.  It 
meets  persons  and  phrases,  it  assimilates  the  spirit  of  a 
book,  it  is  startled  into  new  realisations  by  some  acci- 


272      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

dent  that  seems  altogether  irrelevant  to  the  general 
tenor  of  one's  life.  Its  increasing  independence  of  the 
ostensible  career  makes  it  the  organ  of  corrective 
criticism;  it  accumulates  disturbing  energy.  Then  it 
breaks  our  overt  promises  and  repudiates  our  pledges, 
coming  down  at  last  like  an  overbearing  mentor  upon 
the  small  engagements  of  the  pupil. 

In  the  life  of  the  individual  it  takes  the  role  that 
the  growth  of  philosophy,  science,  and  creative  litera- 
ture may  play  in  the  development  of  mankind. 

§    2 

It  is  curious  to  recall  how  Britten  helped  shatter 
that  obvious,  lucidly  explicable  presentation  of  myself 
upon  which  I  had  embarked  with  Margaret.  He  re- 
turned to  revive  a  memory  of  adolescent  dreams  and 
a  habit  of  adolescent  frankness;  he  reached  through 
my  shallow  frontage  as  no  one  else  seemed  capable  of 
doing,  and  dragged  that  back-self  into  relation  with  it. 

I  remember  very  distinctly  a  dinner  and  a  sub- 
sequent walk  with  him  which  presents  itself  now  as 
altogether  typical  of  the  quality  of  his  influence. 

I  had  come  upon  him  one  day  while  lunching  with 
Somers  and  Sutton  at  the  Playwrights'  Club,  and  had 
asked  him  to  dinner  on  the  spur  of  the  moment.  He 
was  oddly  the  same  curly-headed,  red-faced  ventrilo- 
quist, and  oddly  different,  rather  seedy  as  well  as 
untidy,  and  at  first  a  little  inclined  to  make  compari- 
sons with  my  sleek  successfulness.  But  that  disposi- 
tion presently  evaporated,  and  his  talk  was  good  and 
fresh  and  provocative.  And  something  that  had  long 
been  straining  at  its  checks  in  my  mind  flapped  over, 
and  he  and  I  found  ourselves  of  one  accord. 

Altiora  wasn't  at  this  dinner.  When  she  came 
matters  were  apt  to  become  confusedly  strenuous. 
There  was  always  a  slight  and  ineffectual  struggle  at 


RIDDLE   FOR   STATESMAN      273 

the  end  on  the  part  of  Margaret  to  anticipate  Altiora's 
overpowering  tendency  to  a  rally  and  the  establishment 
of  some  entirely  unjustifiable  conclusion  by  a  coup-de- 
main.  When,  however,  Altiora  was  absent,  the  quieter 
influence  of  the  Cramptons  prevailed;  temperance  and 
information  for  its  own  sake  prevailed  excessively  over 
dinner  and  the  play  of  thought.  .  .  .  Good  Lord !  what 
bores  the  Cramptons  were!  I  wonder  I  endured 
them  as  I  did.  They  had  all  of  them  the  trick  of 
lying  in  wait  conversationally;  they  had  no  sense  of 
the  self-exposures,  the  gallant  experiments  in  state- 
ment that  are  necessary  for  good  conversation.  They 
would  watch  one  talking  with  an  expression  exactly 
like  peeping  through  bushes.  Then  they  would,  as 
it  were,  dash  out,  dissent  succinctly,  contradict  some 
secondary  fact,  and  back  to  cover.  They  gave  one 
twilight  nerves.  Their  wives  were  easier  but  still 
difficult  at  a  stretch;  they  talked  a  good  deal  about 
children  and  servants,  but  with  an  air  caught  from 
Altiora  of  making  observations  upon  sociological  types. 
Lewis  gossiped  about  the  House  in  an  entirely  finite 
manner.  He  never  raised  a  discussion;  nobody  ever 
raised  a  discussion.  He  would  ask  what  we  thought  of 
Evesham's  question  that  afternoon,  and  Edward  would 
say  it  was  good,  and  Mrs.  Willie,  who  had  been  behind 
the  grille,  would  think  it  was  very  good,  and  then 
Willie,  parting  the  branches,  would  say  rather  con- 
clusively that  he  didn't  think  it  was  very  much  good, 
and  I  would  deny  hearing  the  question  in  order  to 
evade  a  profitless  statement  of  views  in  that  vacuum, 
and  then  we  would  cast  about  in  our  minds  for  some 
other  topic  of  equal  interest.  .  .  . 

On  this  occasion  Altiora  was  absent,  and  to  qualify 
our  Young  Liberal  bleakness  we  had  Mrs.  Millingham, 
with  her  white  hair  and  her  fresh  mind  and  complexion, 
and  Esmeer.  Willie  Crampton  was  with  us,  but  not 


274        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

his  wife,  who  was  having  her  third  baby  on  principle; 
his  brother  Edward  was  present,  and  the  Lewises,  and 
of  course  the  Bunting  Harblows.  There  was  also  some 
other  lady.  J  remember  her  as  pale  blue,  but  for  the 
life  of  me  I  cannot  remember  her  name. 

Quite  early  there  was  a  little  breeze  between  Edward 
Crampton  and  Esmeer,  who  had  ventured  an  opinion 
about  the  partition  of  Poland.  Edward  was  at  work 
then  upon  the  seventh  volume  of  his  monumental  Life 
of  Kosciusko,  and  a  little  impatient  with  views  perhaps 
not  altogether  false  but  betraying  a  lamentable  igno- 
rance of  accessible  literature.  At  any  rate,  his  correc- 
tion of  Esmeer  was  magisterial.  After  that  there  was 
a  distinct  and  not  altogether  delightful  pause,  and  then 
some  one,  it  may  have  been  the  pale-blue  lady,  asked 
Mrs.  Lewis  whether  her  aunt  Lady  Carmixter  had  re- 
turned from  her  rest-and-sun-cure  in  Italy.  That  led 
to  a  rather  anxiously  sustained  talk  about  regimen, 
and  Willie  told  us  how  he  had  profited  by  the  no- 
breakfast  system.  It  had  increased  his  power  of  work 
enormously.  He  could  get  through  ten  hours  a  day 
now  without  inconvenience. 

"  What  do  you  do  ?  "  said  Esmeer  abruptly. 

"Oh!  no  end  of  work.  There's  all  the  estate  and 
looking  after  things." 

"But  publicly?" 

"  I  asked  three  questions  yesterday.  And  for  one 
of  them  I  had  to  consult  nine  books ! " 

We  were  drifting,  I  could  see,  towards  Doctor 
Haig's  system  of  dietary,  and  whether  the  exclusion  or 
inclusion  of  fish  and  chicken  were  most  conducive  to 
high  efficiency,  when  Britten,  who  had  refused  lemonade 
and  claret  and  demanded  Burgundy,  broke  out,  and 
was  discovered  to  be  demanding  in  his  throat  just  what 
we  Young  Liberals  thought  we  were  up  to? 

"  I   want,"   said   Britten,    repeating   his   challenge   a 


RIDDLE     FOR     STATESMAN      275 

little  louder,  "to  hear  just  exactly  what  you  think  you 
are  doing  in  Parliament?  " 

Lewis  laughed  nervously,  and  thought  we  were 
"  Seeking  the  Good  of  the  Community." 

14  How?  " 

"  Beneficiont  Legislation/'  said  Lewis. 

"  Beneficient  in  what  direction  ?  "  insisted  Britten. 
"  I  want  to  know  where  you  think  you  are  going." 

"  Amelioration  of  Social   Conditions,"   said   Lewis. 

"  That's  only  a  phrase !  " 

"  You   wouldn't  have   me   sketch  bills   at   dinner  ?  " 

"  I'd  like  you  to  indicate  directions,"  said  Britten, 
and  waited. 

"  Upward  and  On,"  said  Lewis  with  conscious  neat- 
ness, and  turned  to  ask  Mrs.  Bunting  Harblow  about 
her  little  boy's  French. 

For  a  time  talk  frothed  over  Britten's  head,  but 
the  natural  mischief  in  Mrs.  Millingham  had  been 
stirred,  and  she  was  presently  echoing  his  demand  in 
lisping,  quasi-confidential  undertones.  "  What  are  we 
Liberals  doing  ?  "  Then  Esmeer  fell  in  with  the  revo- 
lutionaries. 

To  begin  with,  I  was  a  little  shocked  by  this  clamour 
for  fundamentals — and  a  little  disconcerted.  I  had  the 
experience  that  I  suppose  comes  to  every  one  at  times 
of  discovering  oneself  together  with  two  different  sets 
of  people  with  whom  one  has  maintained  two  different 
sets  of  attitudes.  It  had  always  been,  I  perceived,  an 
instinctive  suppression  in  our  circle  that  we  shouldn't 
be  more  than  vague  about  our  political  ideals.  It  had 
almost  become  part  of  my  morality  to  respect  this  con- 
vention. It  was  understood  we  were  all  working  hard, 
and  keeping  ourselves  fit,  tremendously  fit,  under  Alti- 
ora's  inspiration,  Pro  Bono  Publico.  Bunting  Harblow 
had  his  under-secretaryship,  and  Lewis  was  on  the 
verge  of  the  Cabinet,  and  these  things  we  considered  to 


276      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

be  in  the  nature  of  confirmations.  ...  It  added  to  the 
discomfort  of  the  situation  that  these  plunging  enquiries 
were  being  made  in  the  presence  of  our  wives. 

The  rebel  section  of  our  party  forced  the  talk. 

Edward  Crampton  was  presently  declaring — I  forget 
in  what  relation:  "  The  country  is  with  us." 

My  long-controlled  hatred  of  the  Cramptons'  stereo- 
typed phrases  about  the  Country  and  the  House  got  the 
better  of  me.  I  showed  my  cloven  hoof  to  my  friends 
for  the  first  time. 

"  We  don't  respect  the  Country  as  we  used  to  do/' 
I  said.  "  We  haven't  the  same  belief  we  used  to  have 
in  the  will  of  the  people.  It's  no  good,  Crampton, 
trying  to  keep  that  up.  We  Liberals  know  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact — nowadays  every  one  knows — that  the 
monster  that  brought  us  into  power  has,  among  other 
deficiencies,  no  head.  We've  got  to  give  it  one — if 
possible  with  brains  and  a  will.  That  lies  in  the 
future.  For  the  present  if  the  country  is  with  us,  it 
means  merely  that  we  happen  to  have  hold  of  its 
tether." 

Lewis  was  shocked.  A  "  mandate "  from  the  Coun- 
try was  sacred  to  his  system  of  pretences. 

Britten  wasn  t  subdued  by  his  first  rebuff;  presently 
he  was  at  us  again.  There  were  several  attempts  to 
check  his  outbreak  of  interrogation;  I  remember  the 
Cramptons  asked  questions  about  the  welfare  of  vari- 
ous cousins  of  Lewis  who  were  unknown  to  the  rest 
of  us,  and  Margaret  tried  to  engage  Britten  in  a  sym- 
pathetic discussion  of  the  Arts  and  Crafts  exhibition. 
But  Britten  and  Esmeer  were  persistent.  Mrs.  Milling- 
ham  was  mischievous,  and  in  the  end  our  rising  hopes 
of  Young  Liberalism  took  to  their  thickets  for  good, 
while  we  talked  all  over  them  of  the  prevalent  vacuity 
of  political  intentions.  Margaret  was  perplexed  by  me. 
J*  is  only  now  I  perceive  just  how  perplexing  I  must 


RIDDLE    FOR    STATESMAN      277 

have  been.  "Of  course/'  she  said  with  that  faint 
stress  of  apprehension  in  her  eyes,  "  one  must  have 
aims."  And,  "it  isn't  always  easy  to  put  everything 
into  phrases."  "  Don't  be  long/'  said  Mrs.  Edward 
Crampton  to  her  hsuband  as  the  wives  trooped  out. 
And  afterwards  when  we  went  upstairs  I  had  an  inde- 
finable persuasion  that  the  ladies  had  been  criticising 
Britten's  share  in  our  talk  in  an  altogether  unfavour- 
able spirit.  Mrs.  Edward  evidently  thought  him  ag- 
gressive and  impertinent,  and  Margaret  with  a  quiet 
firmness  that  brooked  no  resistance,  took  him  at  once 
into  a  corner  and  showed  him  Italian  photographs  by 
Coburn.  We  dispersed  early. 

I  walked  with  Britten  along  the  Chelsea  back  streets 
towards  Battersea  Bridge — he  lodged  on  the  south  side. 

"  Mrs.  Millingham's  a  dear,"  he  began. 

"She's   a  dear." 

"  I  liked  her  demand  for  a  hansom  because  a  four- 
wheeler  was  too  safe." 

"  She  was  worked  up,"  I  said.  "  She's  a  woman  of 
faultless  character,  but  her  instincts,  as  Altiora  would 
say,  are  anarchistic — when  she  gives  them  a  chance." 

"  So  she  takes  it  out  in  hansom  cabs." 

"  Hansom  cabs." 

"  She's  wise,"  said  Britten.  .  .  . 

"  I  hope,  Remington,"  he  went  on  after  a  pause,  "  I 
didn't  rag  your  other  guests  too  much.  I've  a  sort  of 

feeling  at  moments Remington,  those  chaps  are 

so  infernally  not — not  bloody.  It's  part  of  a  man's 
duty  sometimes  at  least  to  eat  red  beef  and  get  drunk. 
How  is  he  to  understand  government  if  he  doesn't? 
It  scares  me  to  think  of  your  lot — by  a  sort  of  mis- 
apprehension— being  in  power.  A  kind  of  neuralgia 
in  the  head,  by  way  of  government.  I  don't  under- 
stand where  you  come  in.  Those  others — they've  no 
lusts.  Th^ir  ideal  is  anaemia.  You  and  I,  we  had  at 


278      THE    NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

least  a  lust  to  take  hold  of  life  and  make  something  of 
it.  They — they  want  to  take  hold  of  life  and  make 
nothing  of  it.  They  want  to  cut  out  all  the  stimulants. 
Just  as  though  life  was  anything  else  but  a  reaction  to 
stimulation ! "  .  .  . 

He  began  to  talk  of  his  own  life,  He  had  had  ill- 
fortune  through  most  of  it.  He  was  poor  and  unsuc- 
cessful, and  a  girl  he  had  been  very  fond  of  had  been 
attacked  and  killed  by  a  horse  in  a  field  in  a  very  hor- 
rible manner.  These  things  had  wounded  and  tortured 
him,  but  they  hadn't  broken  him.  They  had,  it  seemed 
to  me,  made  a  kind  of  crippled  and  ugly  demigod  of 
him.  He  was,  I  began  to  perceive,  so  much  better  than 
I  had  any  right  to  expect.  At  first  I  had  been  rather 
struck  by  his  unkempt  look,  and  it  made  my  reaction 
all  the  stronger.  There  was  about  him  something,  a 
kind  of  raw  and  bleeding  faith  in  the  deep  things  of 
life,  that  stirred  me  profoundly  as  he  showed  it.  My 
set  of  people  had  irritated  him  and  disappointed  him. 
1  discovered  at  his  touch  how  they  irritated  him.  He 
reproached  me  boldly.  He  made  me  feel  ashamed  of 
my  easy  acquiescences  as  I  walked  in  my  sleek  tall 
neatness  beside  his  rather  old  coat,  his  rather  battered 
hat,  his  sturdier  shorter  shape,  and  listened  to  his  de- 
nunciations of  our  self-satisfied  New  Liberalism  and 
Progressivism. 

"  It  has  the  same  relation  to  progress — the  reality 
of  progress — that  the  things  they  paint  on  door  panels 
in  the  suburbs  have  to  art  and  beauty.  There's  a  sort 
of  filiation.  .  .  .  Your  Altiora's  just  the  political  equiv- 
alent of  the  ladies  who  sell  traced  cloth  for  embroid- 
ery; she's  a  dealer  in  Refined  Social  Reform  for  the 
Parlour.  The  real  progress,  Remington,  is  a  graver 
thing  and  a  painfuller  thing  and  a  slower  thing  alto- 
gether. Look !  that  " — and  he  pointed  to  where  under 
a  hoarding  in  the  light  of  a  gas  lamp  a  dingy  prosti- 
tute stood  lurking — "was  in  Babylon  and  Nineveh. 


RIDDLE     FOR     STATESMAN      279 

Your  little  lot  make  believe  there  won't  be  anything  of 
the  sort  after  this  Parliament!  They're  going  to  van- 
ish at  a  few  top  notes  from  Altiora  Bailey!  Reming- 
ton!— it's  foolery.  It's  prigs  at  play.  It's  make-be- 
lieve, make-believe!  Your  people  there  haven't  got 
hold  of  things,  aren't  beginning  to  get  hold  of 
things,  don't  know  anything  of  life  at  all,  shirk 
life,  avoid  life,  get  in  little  bright  clean  rooms  and  talk 
big  over  your  bumpers  of  lemonade  while  the  Night 
goes  by  outside — untouched.  Those  Crampton  fools 
slink  by  all  this," — he  waved  at  the  woman  again — 
"  pretend  it  doesn't  exist,  or  is  going  to  be  banished 
root  and  branch  by  an  Act  to  keep  children  in  the  wet 
outside  public-houses.  Do  you  think  they  really  care, 
Remington?  I  don't.  It's  make-believe.  What  they 
want  to  do,  what  Lewis  wants  to  do,  what  Mrs.  Bunt- 
ing Harblow  wants  her  husband  to  do,  is  to  sit  and  feel 
very  grave  and  necessary  and  respected  on  the  Gov- 
ernment benches.  They  think  of  putting  their  feet  out 
like  statesmen,  and  tilting  shiny  hats  with  becoming 
brims  down  over  their  successful  noses.  Presentation 
portrait  to  a  club  at  fifty.  That's  their  Reality. 
That's  their  scope.  They  don't,  it's  manifest,  want  to 
think  beyond  that.  The  things  there  are,  Remington, 
they'll  never  face!  the  wonder  and  the  depth  of  life, 
— lust,  and  the  night-sky, — pain." 

"  But  the  good  intention,"  I  pleaded,  "  the  Good 
Will!" 

"  Sentimentality,"  said  Britten.  "  No  Good  Will  is 
anything  but  dishonesty  unless  it  frets  and  burns  and 
hurts  and  destroys  a  man.  That  lot  of  yours  have 
nothing  but  a  good  will  to  think  they  have  good  will. 
Do  you  think  they  lie  awake  of  nights  searching  their 
hearts  as  we  do?  Lewis?  Crampton?  Or  those  neat> 
admiring,  satisfied  little  wives?  See  how  they  shrank 
from  the  probe ! " 


280      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

"  We  all/'  I  said,  "  shrink  from  the  probe/' 

"  God  help  us ! "  said  Britten.  .   .  . 

"  We  are  but  vermin  at  the  best,  Remington/'  he 
broke  out,  "  and  the  greatest  saint  only  a  worm  that 
has  lifted  its  head  for  a  moment  from  the  dust.  We 
are  damned,  we  are  meant  to  be  damned,  coral  animal- 
culse  building  upward,  upward  in  a  sea  of  damnation. 
But  of  all  the  damned  things  that  ever  were  damned, 
your  damned  shirking,  temperate,  sham-efficient,  self- 
satisfied,  respectable,  make-believe,  Fabian-spirited 
Young  Liberal  is  the  utterly  damnedest."  He  paused 
for  a  moment,  and  resumed  in  an  entirely  different 
note :  "  Which  is  why  I  was  so  surprised,  Remington^ 
to  find  you  in  this  set!  " 

"You're  just  the  old  plunger  you  used  to  be,  Brit- 
ten/' I  said.  "  You're  going  too  far  with  all  your 
might  for  the  sake  of  the  damns.  Like  a  donkey  that 
drags  its  cart  up  a  bank  to  get  thistles.  There's  depths 
in  Liberalism " 

"We  were  talking  about  Liberals." 

"  Liberty ! " 

"Liberty!  What  do  your  little  lot  know  of  lib- 
erty?" 

"What  does  any  little  lot  know  of  liberty?" 

"  It  waits  outside,  too  big  for  our  understanding. 
Like  the  night  and  the  stars.  And  lust,  Remington! 
lust  and  bitterness !  Don't  I  know  them  ?  with  all  the 
sweetness  and  hope  of  life  bitten  and  trampled,  the 
dear  eyes  and  the  brain  that  loved  and  understood — 
and  my  poor  mumble  of  a  life  going  on!  I'm  within 
sight  of  being  a  drunkard,  Remington!  I'm  a  failure 
by  most  standards!  Life  has  cut  me  to  the  bone. 
But  I'm  not  afraid  of  it  any  more.  I've  paid  some- 
thing of  the  price,  I've  seen  something  of  the  mean- 
ing." 

He  flew  off  at  a  tangent.     "  I'd  rather  die  in  De- 


RIDDLE     FOR     STATESMAN      281 

lirium  Tremens,"  he  cried,  "  than  be  a  Crampton  or  a 
Lewis.  .  .  ." 

"  Make-believe.  Make-believe."  The  phrase  and 
Britten's  squat  gestures  haunted  me  as  I  walked  home- 
ward alone.  I  went  to  my  room  and  stood  before  my 
desk  and  surveyed  papers  and  files  and  Margaret's 
admirable  equipment  of  me. 

I  perceived  in  the  lurid  light  of  Britten's  suggestions 
that  so  it  was  Mr.  George  Alexander  would  have 
mounted  a  statesman's  private  room.  .  .  . 

§    3 

I  was  never  at  any  stage  a  loyal  party  man.  I  doubt 
if  party  will  ever  again  be  the  force  it  was  during  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries.  Men  are  becom- 
ing increasingly  constructive  and  selective,  less  patient 
under  tradition  and  the  bondage  of  initial  circumstances. 
As  education  becomes  more  universal  and  liberating, 
men  will  sort  themselves  more  and  more  by  their  intel- 
lectual temperaments  and  less  and  less  by  their  acci- 
dental associations.  The  past  will  rule  them  less;  the 
future  more.  It  is  not  simply  party  but  school  and 
college  and  county  and  country  that  lose  their  glamour. 
One  does  not  hear  nearly  as  much  as  our  forefathers 
did  of  the  "  old  Harrovian/'  "  old  Arvonian,  "  old  Eton- 
ian "  claim  to  this  or  that  unfair  advantage  or  unearnt 
sympathy.  Even  the  Scotch  and  the  Devonians  weaken 
a  little  in  their  clannishness.  A  widening  sense  of  fair 
play  destroys  such  things.  They  follow  freemasonry 
down — freemasonry  of  which  one  is  chiefly  reminded 
nowadays  in  England  by  propitiatory  symbols  outside 
shady  public-houses.  .  .  . 

There  is,  of  course,  a  type  of  man  which  clings  very 
obstinately  to  party  ties.  These  are  the  men  with 
strong  reproductive  imaginations  and  no  imaginative 
initiative,  such  men  as  Cladingbowl,  for  example,  or 


282      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

Dayton.  They  are  the  scholars-at-large  in  life.  For 
them  the  fact  that  the  party  system  has  been  essential 
in  the  history  of  England  for  two  hundred  years  gives 
it  an  overwhelming  glamour.  They  have  read  histories 
and  memoirs,  they  see  the  great  grey  pile  of  West- 
minster not  so  much  for  what  it  is  as  for  what  it  was, 
rich  with  dramatic  memories,  populous  with  glorious 
ghosts,  phrasing  itself  inevitably  in  anecdotes  and  quo- 
tations. It  seems  almost  scandalous  that  new  things 
should  continue  to  happen,  swamping  with  strange  qual- 
ities the  savour  of  these  old  associations. 

That  Mr.  Ramsay  Macdonald  should  walk  through 
Westminster  Hall,  thrust  himself,  it  may  be,  through 
the  very  piece  of  space  that  once  held  Charles  the 
Martyr  pleading  for  his  life,  seems  horrible  profana- 
tion to  Dayton,  a  last  posthumous  outrage;  and  he 
would,  I  think,  like  to  have  the  front  benches  left 
empty  now  for  ever,  or  at  most  adorned  with  laureated 
ivory  tablets :  "  Here  Dizzy  sat,"  and  "  On  this  Spot 
William  Ewart  Gladstone  made  his  First  Budget 
Speech."  Failing  this,  he  demands,  if  only  as  signs 
of  modesty  and  respect  on  the  part  of  the  survivors, 
meticulous  imitation.  "  Mr.  G.,"  he  murmurs,  "  would 
not  have  done  that,"  and  laments  a  vanished  subtlety 
even  while  Mr.  Evesham  is  speaking.  He  is  always 
gloomily  disposed  to  lapse  into  wonderings  about  what 
things  are  coming  to,  wonderings  that  have  no  grain 
of  curiosity.  His  conception  of  perfect  conduct  is  in- 
dustrious persistence  along  the  worn-down,  well-marked 
grooves  of  the  great  recorded  days.  So  infinitely  more 
important  to  him  is  the  documented,  respected  thing 
than  the  elusive  present. 

Cladingbowl  and  Dayton  do  not  shine  in  the  House, 
though  Cladingbowl  is  a  sound  man  on  a  committee, 
and  Dayton  keeps  the  Old  Country  Gazette,  the  most 
gentlemanly  paper  in  London.  They  prevail,  however, 


RIDDLE     FOR     STATESMAN      283 

in  their  clubs  at  lunch  time.  There,  with  the  pleasant 
consciousness  of  a  morning's  work  free  from  either  zeal 
or  shirking,  they  mingle  with  permanent  officials,  prom- 
inent lawyers,  even  a  few  of  the  soberer  type  of  busi- 
ness men,  and  relax  their  minds  in  the  discussion  of  the 
morning  paper,  of  the  architecture  of  the  West  End, 
and  of  the  latest  public  appointments,  of  golf,  of  holi- 
day resorts,  of  the  last  judicial  witticisms  and  forensic 
"  crushers."  The  New  Year  and  Birthday  honours 
lists  are  always  very  sagely  and  exhaustively  consid- 
ered, and  anecdotes  are  popular  and  keenly  judged. 
They  do  not  talk  of  the  things  that  are  really  active  in 
their  minds,  but  in  the  formal  and  habitual  manner  they 
suppose  to  be  proper  to  intelligent  but  still  honourable 
men.  Socialism,  individual  money  matters,  and  religion 
are  forbidden  topics,  and  sex  and  women  only  in  so 
far  as  they  appear  in  the  law  courts.  It  is  to  me  the 
strangest  of  conventions,  this  assumption  of  unreal 
loyalties  and  traditional  respects,  this  repudiation  and 
concealment  of  passionate  interests.  It  is  like  wearing 
gloves  in  summer  fields,  or  bathing  in  a  gown,  or  fall- 
ing in  love  with  the  heroine  of  a  novel,  or  writing  under 
a  pseudonym,  or  becoming  a  masked  Tuareg.  .  .  . 

It  is  not,  I  think,  that  men  of  my  species  are  insensi- 
tive to  the  great  past  that  is  embodied  in  Westminster 
and  its  traditions;  we  are  not  so  much  wanting  in  the 
historical  sense  as  alive  to  the  greatness  of  our  present 
opportunities  and  the  still  vaster  future  that  is  possible 
to  us.  London  is  the  most  interesting,  beautiful,  and 
wonderful  city  in  the  world  to  me,  delicate  in  her  in- 
cidental and  multitudinous  littleness,  and  stupendous 
in  her  pregnant  totality;  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  use 
her  as  a  museum  or  an  old  bookshop.  When  I  think 
of  Whitehall  that  little  affair  on  the  scaffold  outside 
the  Banqueting  Hall  seems  trivial  and  remote  in  com- 
parison with  the  possibilities  that  offer  themselves  to 


284       THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

my   imagination   within   the     great    grey     Government 
buildings  close  at  hand. 

It  gives  me  a  qualm  of  nostalgia  even  to  name  those 
places  now.  I  think  of  St.  Stephen's  tower  streaming 
upwards  into  the  misty  London  night  and  the  great  wet 
quadrangle  of  New  Palace  Yard,  from  which  the  han- 
som cabs  of  my  first  experiences  were  ousted  more  and 
more  by  taxicabs  as  the  second  Parliament  of  King 
Edward  the  Seventh  aged;  I  think  of  the  Admiralty 
and  War  office  with  their  tall  Marconi  masts  sending 
out  invisible  threads  of  direction  to  the  armies  in  the 
camps,  to  great  fleets  about  the  world.  The  crowded, 
darkly  shining  river  goes  flooding  through  my  memory 
once  again,  on  to  those  narrow  seas  that  part  us  from 
our  rival  nations;  I  see  quadrangles  and  corridors  of 
spacious  grey-toned  offices  in  which  undistinguished  lit- 
tle men  and  little  files  of  papers  link  us  to  islands  in 
the  tropics,  to  frozen  wildernesses  gashed  for  gold,  to 
vast  temple-studded  plains,  to  forest  worlds  and  moun- 
tain worlds,  to  ports  and  fortresses  and  lighthouses  and 
watch-towers  and  grazing  lands  and  corn  lands  all 
about  the  globe.  Once  more  I  traverse  Victoria  Street, 
grimy  and  dark,  where  the  Agents  of  the  Empire  jostle 
one  another,  pass  the  big  embassies  in  the  West  End 
with  their  flags  and  scutcheons,  follow  the  broad  ave- 
nue that  leads  to  Buckingham  Palace,  witness  the  com- 
ing and  going  of  troops  and  officials  and  guests  along 
it  from  every  land  on  earth.  .  .  .  Interwoven  in  the 
texture  of  it  all,  mocking,  perplexing,  stimulating  be- 
yond measure,  is  the  gleaming  consciousness,  the  chal- 
lenging knowledge :  "  You  and  your  kind  might  still, 
if  you  could  but  grasp  it  here,  mould  all  the  destiny  of 
Man!" 

§  4 

My  first  three  years  in  Parliament  were  years   of 


RIDDLE     FOR     STATESMAN      285 

active  discontent.  The  little  group  of  younger  Liberals 
to  which  I  belonged  was  very  ignorant  of  the  traditions 
and  qualities  of  our  older  leaders,  and  quite  out  of 
touch  with  the  mass  of  the  party.  For  a  time  Par- 
liament was  enormously  taken  up  with  moribund  issues 
and  old  quarrels.  The  early  Educational  legislation 
was  sectarian  and  unenterprising,  and  the  Licensing 
Bill  went  little  further  than  the  attempted  rectifica- 
tion of  a  Conservative  mistake.  I  was  altogether  for 
the  nationalisation  of  the  public-houses,  and  of  this  end 
the  Bill  gave  no  intimations.  It  was  just  beer-bait- 
ing. I  was  recalcitrant  almost  from  the  beginning, 
and  spoke  against  the  Government  so  early  as  the  sec- 
ond reading  of  the  first  Education  Bill,  the  one  the 
Lords  rejected  in  1906.  I  went  a  little  beyond  my 
intention  in  the  heat  of  speaking, — it  is  a  way  with 
inexperienced  man.  I  called  the  Bill  timid,  narrow, 
a  mere  sop  to  the  jealousies  of  sects  and  little-minded 
people.  I  contrasted  its  aim  and  methods  with  the 
manifest  needs  of  the  time. 

I  am  not  a  particularly  good  speaker;  after  the  man- 
ner of  a  writer  I  worry  to  find  my  meaning  too  much; 
but  this  was  one  of  my  successes.  I  spoke  after  din- 
ner and  to  a  fairly  full  House,  for  people  were  already 
a  little  curious  about  me  because  of  my  writings. 
Several  of  the  Conservative  leaders  were  present  and 
stayed,  and  Mr.  Evesham,  I  remember,  came  ostenta- 
tiously to  hear  me,  with  that  engaging  friendliness  of 
his,  and  gave  me  at  the  first  chance  an  approving 
"  Hear,  Hear !  "  I  can  still  recall  quite  distinctly  my 
two  futile  attempts  to  catch  the  Speaker's  eye  before  I 
was  able  to  begin,  the  nervous  quiver  of  my  rather  too 
prepared  opening,  the  effect  of  hearing  my  own  voice 
and  my  subconscious  wonder  as  to  what  I  could  possibly 
be  talking  about,  the  realisation  that  I  was  getting  on 
fairly  well,  the  immense  satisfaction  afterwards  of  hav- 


286      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

ing  on  the  whole  brought  it  off,  and  the  absurd  grati- 
tude I  felt  for  that  encouraging  cheer. 

Addressing  the  House  of  Commons  is  like  no  other 
public  speaking  in  the  world.  Its  semi-colloquial  meth- 
ods give  it  an  air  of  being  easy,  but  its  shifting  audi- 
ence, the  comings  and  goings  and  hesitations  of  mem- 
bers behind  the  chair — not  mere  audience  units,  but 
men  who  matter — the  desolating  emptiness  that  spreads 
itself  round  the  man  who  fails  to  interest,  the  little 
compact,  disciplined  crowd  in  the  strangers'  gallery, 
the  light,  elusive,  flickering  movements  high  up  behind 
the  grill,  the  wigged,  attentive,  weary  Speaker,  the 
table  and  the  mace  and  the  chapel-like  Gothic  back- 
ground with  its  sombre  shadows,  conspire  together,  pro- 
duce a  confused,  uncertain  feeling  in  me,  as  though  I 
was  walking  upon  a  pavement  full  of  trap-doors  and 
patches  of  uncovered  morass.  A  misplaced,  well-meant 
"  Hear,  Hear ! "  is  apt  to  be  extraordinarily  disconcert- 
ing, and  under  no  other  circumstances  have  I  had  to 
speak  with  quite  the  same  sideways  twist  that  the  ar- 
rangement of  the  House  imposes.  One  does  not  recog- 
nise one's  own  voice  threading  out  into  the  stirring 
brown.  Unless  I  was  excited  or  speaking  to  the  mind 
of  some  particular  person  in  the  House,  I  was  apt  to 
lose  my  feeling  of  an  auditor.  I  had  no  sense  of 
whither  my  sentences  were  going,  such  as  one  has  with 
a  public  meeting  well  under  one's  eye.  And  to  lose 
one's  sense  of  an  auditor  is  for  a  man  of  my  tempera- 
ment to  lose  one's  sense  of  the  immediate,  and  to  be- 
come prolix  and  vague  with  qualifications. 

§  5 

My  discontents  with  the  Liberal  party  and  my  men- 
tal exploration  of  the  quality  of  party  generally  is 
curiously  mixed  up  with  certain  impressions  of  things 


RIDDLE   FOR   STATESMAN       287 

and  people  in  the  National  Liberal  Club.  The  Na- 
tional Liberal  Club  is  Liberalism  made  visible  in  the 
flesh — and  Doultonware.  It  is  an  extraordinary  big 
club  done  in  a  bold,  wholesale,  shiny,  marbled  style, 
richly  furnished  with  numerous  paintings,  steel  engrav- 
ings, busts,  and  full-length  statues  of  the  late  Mr. 
Gladstone ;  and  its  spacious  dining-rooms,  its  long,  hazy, 
crowded  smoking-room  with  innumerable  little  tables 
and  groups  of  men  in  armchairs,  its  magazine  room 
and  library  upstairs,  have  just  that  undistinguished  and 
unconcentrated  diversity  which  is  for  me  the  Liberal 
note.  The  pensive  member  sits  and  hears  perplexing 
dialects  and  even  fragments  of  foreign  speech,  and 
among  the  clustering  masses  of  less  insistent  whites  his 
roving  eye  catches  profiles  and  complexions  that  send 
his  mind  afield  to  Calcutta  or  Rangoon  or  the  West 
Indies  or  Sierra  Leone  or  the  Cape.  .  .  . 

I  was  not  infrequently  that  pensive  member.  I 
used  to  go  to  the  Club  to  doubt  about  Liberalism. 

About  two  o'clock  in  the  day  the  great  smoking- 
room  is  crowded  with  countless  little  groups.  They 
sit  about  small  round  tables,  or  in  circles  of  chairs, 
and  the  haze  of  tobacco  seems  to  prolong  the  great 
narrow  place,  with  its  pillars  and  bays,  to  infinity. 
Some  of  the  groups  are  big,  as  many  as  a  dozen  men 
talk  in  loud  tones;  some  are  duologues,  and  there  is 
always  a  sprinkling  of  lonely,  dissociated  men.  At 
first  one  gets  an  impression  of  men  going  from  group 
to  group  and  as  it  were  linking  them,  but  as  one 
watches  closely  one  finds  that  these  men  just  visit  three 
or  four  groups  at  the  outside,  and  know  nothing  of 
the  others.  One  begins  to  perceive  more  and  more 
distinctly  that  one  is  dealing  with  a  sort  of  human 
mosaic;  that  each  patch  in  that  great  place  is  of  a  dif- 
ferent quality  and  colour  from  the  next  and  never  to 
be  mixed  with  it.  Most  clubs  have  a  common  link,  a 


288      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

lowest  common  denominator  in  the  Club  Bore,  who 
spares  no  one,  but  even  the  National  Liberal  bores  are 
specialised  and  sectional.  As  one  looks  round  one  sees 
here  a  clump  of  men  from  the  North  Country  or  the 
Potteries,  here  an  island  of  South  London  politicians, 
here  a  couple  of  young  Jews  ascendant  from  White- 
chapel,  here  a  circle  of  journalists  and  writers,  here  a 
group  of  Irish  politicians,  here  two  East  Indians,  here 
a  priest  or  so,  here  a  clump  of  old-fashioned  Protest- 
ants, here  a  little  knot  of  eminent  Rationalists  indulg- 
ing in  a  blasphemous  story  sotto  voce.  Next  them  are 
a  group  of  anglicised  Germans  and  highly  specialised 
chess-players,  and  then  two  of  the  oddest-looking  per- 
sons— bulging  with  documents  and  intent  upon  extra- 
ordinary business  transactions  over  long  cigars.  .  .  . 

I  would  listen  to  a  stormy  sea  of  babblement,  and  try 
to  extract  some  constructive  intimations.  Every  now  and 
then  I  got  a  whiff  of  politics.  It  was  clear  they  were 
against  the  Lords — against  plutocrats — against  Cos- 
sington's  newspapers — against  the  brewers.  ...  It 
was  tremendously  clear  what  they  were  against.  The 
trouble  was  to  find  out  what  on  earth  they  were 
for!  .  .  . 

As  I  sat  and  thought,  the  streaked  and  mottled  pil- 
lars and  wall,  the  various  views,  aspects,  and  portraits 
of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gladstone,  the  partitions  of  polished 
mahogany,  the  yellow-vested  waiters,  would  dissolve 
and  vanish,  and  I  would  have  a  vision  of  this  sample 
of  miscellaneous  men  of  limited,  diverse  interests  and 
a  universal  littleness  of  imagination  enlarged,  unlim- 
ited, no  longer  a  sample  but  a  community,  spreading, 
stretching  out  to  infinity — all  in  little  groups  and  duo- 
logues and  circles,  all  with  their  special  and  narrow 
concerns,  all  with  their  backs  to  most  of  the  others. 

What  but  a  common  antagonism  would  ever  keep 
these  multitudes  together?  I  understood  why  modern 


RIDDLE    FOR    STATESMAN      289 

electioneering  is  more  than  half  of  it  denunciation. 
Let  us  condemn,  if  possible,,  let  us  obstruct  and  de- 
prive, but  not  let  us  do.  There  is  no  real  appeal  to 
the  commonplace  mind  in  "Let  us  do."  That  calls 
for  the  creative  imagination,  and  few  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  respond  to  that  call.  The  other  merely  needs 
jealousy  and  hate,  of  which  there  are  great  and  easily 
accessible  reservoirs  in  every  human  heart.  .  .  . 

I  remember  that  vision  of  endless,  narrow,  jealous 
individuality  very  vividly.  A  seething  limitlessness  it 
became  at  last,  like  a  waste  place  covered  by  crawling 
locusts  that  men  sweep  up  by  the  sackload  and  drown 
by  the  million  in  ditches.  .  .  . 

Grotesquely  against  it  came  the  lean  features,  the 
sidelong  shy  movements  of  Edward  Crampton,  seated 
in  a  circle  of  talkers  close  at  hand.  I  had  a  whiff 
of  his  strained,  unmusical  voice,  and  behold!  he  was 
saying  something  about  the  "  Will  of  the  People.  .  .  ." 

The  immense  and  wonderful  disconnectednesses  of 
human  life!  I  forgot  the  smoke  and  jabber  of  the 
club  altogether;  I  became  a  lonely  spirit  flung  aloft 
by  some  queer  accident,  a  stone  upon  a  ledge  in  some 
high  arid  rocky  wilderness,  and  below  as  far  as  the  eye 
could  reach  stretched  the  swarming  infinitesimals  of 
humanity,  like  grass  upon  the  field,  like  pebbles  upon 
unbounded  beaches.  Was  there  ever  to  be  in  human 
life  more  than  that  endless  struggling  individualism? 
Was  there  indeed  some  giantry,  some  immense  valiant 
synthesis,  still  to  come — or  present  it  might  be  and 
still  unseen  by  me,  or  was  this  the  beginning  and  withal 
the  last  phase  of  mankind?  .  .  . 

I  glimpsed  for  a  while  the  stupendous  impudence 
of  our  ambitions,  the  tremendous  enterprise  to  which 
the  modern  statesman  is  implicitly  addressed.  I  was 
as  it  were  one  of  a  little  swarm  of  would-be  reef  build- 
ers looking  back  at  the  teeming  slime  upon  the  ocean 


290      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

floor.  All  the  history  of  mankind,  all  the  history  of 
life,  has  been  and  will  be  the  story  of  something  strug- 
gling out  of  the  indiscriminated  abyss,  struggling  to 
exist  and  prevail  over  and  comprehend  individual  lives 
— an  effort  of  insidious  attraction,  an  idea  of  invincible 
appeal.  That  something  greater  than  ourselves,  which 
does  not  so  much  exist  as  seek  existence,  palpitating 
between  being  and  not-being,  how  marvellous  it  is! 
It  has  worn  the  form  and  visage  of  ten  thousand  dif- 
ferent gods,  sought  a  shape  for  itself  in  stone  and 
ivory  and  music  and  wonderful  words,  spoken  more  and 
more  clearly  of  a  mystery  of  love,  a  mystery  of  unity, 
dabbling  meanwhile  in  blood  and  cruelty  beyond  the 
common  impulses  of  men.  It  is  something  that  comes 
and  goes,  like  a  light  that  shines  and  is  withdrawn, 
withdrawn  so  completely  that  one  doubts  if  it  has  ever 
been.  .  .  . 

§6 

I  would  mark  with  a  curious  interest  the  stray  coun- 
try member  of  the  club  up  in  town  for  a  night  or  so. 
My  mind  would  be  busy  with  speculations  about  him. 
about  his  home,  his  family,  his  reading,  his  horizons, 
his  innumerable  fellows  who  didn't  belong  and  never 
came  up.  I  would  fill  in  the  outline  of  him  with  mem- 
ories of  my  uncle  and  his  Staffordshire  neighbours. 
He  was  perhaps  Alderman  This  or  Councillor  That 
down  there,  a  great  man  in  his  ward,  J.  P.  within  seven 
miles  of  the  boundary  of  the  borough,  and  a  God  in 
his  home.  Here  he  was  nobody,  and  very  shy,  and 
either  a  little  too  arrogant  or  a  little  too  meek  towards 
our  very  democratic  mannered  but  still  liveried  waiters. 
Was  he  perhaps  the  backbone  of  England?  He  over- 
ate himself  lest  he  should  appear  mean,  went  through 
our  Special  Dinner  conscientiously,  drank,  unless  he 
was  teetotal,  of  unfamiliar  wines,  and  did  his  best,  in 


RIDDLE    FOR    STATESMAN     291 

spite  of  the  rules,  to  tip.  Afterwards,  in  a  state  of 
flushed  repletion,  he  would  have  old  brandy,  black  cof- 
fee, and  a  banded  cigar,  or  in  the  name  of  temperance 
omit  the  brandy  and  have  rather  more  coffee,  in  the 
smoking-room.  I  would  sit  and  watch  that  stiff  dignity 
of  self-indulgence,  and  wonder,  wonder.  .  .  . 

An  infernal  clairvoyance  would  come  to  me.  I 
would  have  visions  of  him  in  relation  to  his  wife,  check- 
ing always,  sometimes  bullying,  sometimes  being  osten- 
tatiously "  kind  " ;  I  would  see  him  glance  furtively  at 
his  domestic  servants  upon  his  staircase,  or  stiffen  his 
upper  lip  against  the  reluctant,  protesting  business  em- 
ployee. We  imaginative  people  are  base  enough, 
heaven  knows,  but  it  is  only  in  rare  moods  of  bitter 
penetration  that  we  pierce  down  to  the  baser  lusts,  the 
viler  shames,  the  everlasting  lying  and  muddle-headed 
self-justification  of  the  dull. 

I  would  turn  my  eyes  down  the  crowded  room  and 
see  others  of  him  and  others.  What  did  he  think  he 
was  up  to?  Did  he  for  a  moment  realise  that  his  pres- 
ence under  that  ceramic  glory  of  a  ceiling  with  me 
meant,  if  it  had  any  rational  meaning  at  all,  that  we 
were  jointly  doing  something  with  the  nation  and  the 
empire  and  mankind?  .  .  .  How  on  earth  could  any 
one  get  hold  of  him,  make  any  noble  use  of  him?  He 
didn't  read  beyond  his  newspaper.  He  never  thought, 
but  only  followed  imaginings  in  his  heart.  He  never 
discussed.  At  the  first  hint  of  discussion  his  temper 
gave  way.  He  was,  I  knew,  a  deep,  thinly-covered 
tank  of  resentments  and  quite  irrational  moral  rages. 
Yet  withal  I  would  have  to  resist  an  impulse  to  go 
over  to  him  and  nudge  him  and  say  to  him,  "  Look 
here!  What  indeed  do  you  think  we  are  doing  with 
the  nation  and  the  empire  and  mankind?  You  know 
—Mankind!  " 

I  wonder  what  reply  I  should  have  got. 


292      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

So  far  as  any  average  could  be  struck  and  so  far 
as  any  backbone  could  be  located,  it  seemed  to  me 
that  this  silent,  shy,  replete,  sub-angry,  middle-class 
sentimentalist  was  in  his  endless  species  and  varieties 
and  dialects  the  backbone  of  our  party.  So  far  as  I 
could  be  considered  as  representing  anything  in  the 
House,  I  pretended  to  sit  for  the  elements  of  him.  .  .  . 

§  7 

For  a  time  I  turned  towards  the  Socialists.  They 
at  least  had  an  air  of  coherent  intentions.  At  that 
time  Socialism  had  come  into  politics  again  after  a 
period  of  depression  and  obscurity,  with  a  tremendous 
eclat.  There  was  visibly  a  following  of  Socialist  mem- 
bers to  Chris  Robinson;  mysteriously  uncommunicative 
gentlemen  in  soft  felt  hats  and  short  coats  and  square- 
toed  boots  who  replied  to  casual  advances  a  little  sur- 
prisingly in  rich  North  Country  dialects.  Members 
became  aware  of  a  "  seagreen  incorruptible,"  as  Col- 
onel Marlow  put  it  to  me,  speaking  on  the  Address,  a 
slender  twisted  figure  supporting  itself  on  a  stick  and 
speaking  with  a  fire  that  was  altogether  revolutionary. 
This  was  Philip  Snowden,  the  member  for  Blackburn. 
They  had  come  in  nearly  forty  strong  altogether,  and 
with  an  air  of  presently  meaning  to  come  in  much 
stronger.  They  were  only  one  aspect  of  what  seemed 
at  that  time  a  big  national  movement.  Socialist  soci- 
eties, we  gathered,  were  springing  up  all  over  the  coun- 
try, and  every  one  was  inquiring  about  Socialism  and 
discussing  Socialism.  It  had  taken  the  Universities 
with  particular  force,  and  any  youngster  with  the  slight- 
est intellectual  pretension  was  either  actively  for  or 
brilliantly  against.  For  a  time  our  Young  Liberal 
group  was  ostentatiously  sympathetic.  .  .  . 

When  I  think  of  the  Socialists  there  comes  a  vivid 
memory  of  certain  evening  gatherings  at  our  house.  .  .  . 


RIDDLE   FOR   STATESMAN     293 

These  gatherings  had  been  organised  by  Margaret 
as  the  outcome  of  a  discussion  at  the  Baileys'.  Altiora 
had  been  very  emphatic  and  uncharitable  upon  the  futil- 
ity of  the  Socialist  movement.  It  seemed  that  even 
the  leaders  fought  shy  of  dinner-parties. 

"  They  never  meet  each  other,"  said  Altiora,  "  much 
less  people  on  the  other  side.  How  can  they  begin  to 
understand  politics  until  they  do  that  ?  " 

"  Most  of  them  have  totally  unpresentable  wives," 
said  Altiora,  "  totally !  "  and  quoted  instances,  "  and 
they  will  bring  them.  Or  they  won't  come!  Some  of 
the  poor  creatures  have  scarcely  learnt  their  table  man- 
ners. They  just  make  holes  in  the  talk.  .  .  ." 

I  thought  there  was  a  great  deal  of  truth  beneath 
Altiora's  outburst.  The  presentation  of  the  Socialist 
case  seemed  very  greatly  cr  ppled  by  the  want  of  a 
common  intimacy  in  its  leaders;  the  want  of  intimacy 
didn't  at  first  appear  to  be  more  than  an  accident,  and 
our  talk  led  to  Margaret's  attempt  to  get  acquaintance 
and  easy  intercourse  afoot  among  them  and  between 
them  and  the  Young  Liberals  of  our  group.  She  gave 
a  series  of  weekly  dinners,  planned,  I  think,  a  little  too 
accurately  upon  Altiora's  model,  and  after  each  we  had 
as  catholic  a  reception  as  we  could  contrive. 

Our  receptions  were  indeed,  I  should  think,  about  as 
catholic  as  receptions  could  be.  Margaret  found  her- 
self with  a  weekly  houseful  of  insoluble  problems  in 
intercourse.  One  did  one's  best,  but  one  got  a  night- 
mare feeling  as  the  evening  wore  on. 

It  was  one  of  the  few  unanimities  of  these  parties 
that  every  one  should  be  a  little  odd  in  appearance, 
funny  about  the  hair  or  the  tie  or  the  shoes  or  more 
generally,  and  that  bursts  of  violent  aggression  should 
alternate  with  an  attitude  entirely  defensive.  A  num- 
ber of  our  guests  had  an  air  of  waiting  for  a  clue  that 
never  came,  and  stood  and  sat  about  silently,  mildly 


1 
t  * 


294      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

amused  but  not  a  bit  surprised  that  we  did  not  dis- 
cover their  distinctive  Open-Sesames.  There  was  a 
sprinkling  of  manifest  seers  and  prophetesses  in  shape- 
less garments,  far  too  many,  I  thought,  for  really  easy 
social  intercourse,  and  any  conversation  at  any  moment 
was  liable  to  become  oracular.  One  was  in  a  state  of 
tension  from  first  to  last;  the  most  innocent  remark 
seemed  capable  of  exploding  resentment,  and  replies 
came  out  at  the  most  unexpected  angles.  We  Young 
Liberals  went  about  puzzled  but  polite  to  the  gather- 
ing we  had  evoked.  The  Young  Liberals'  tradition  is 
on  the  whole  wonderfully  discreet,  superfluous  steam 
is  let  out  far  away  from  home  in  the  Balkans  or  Africa, 
and  the  neat,  stiif  figures  of  the  Cramptons,  Bunting 
Harblow,  and  Lewis,  either  in  extremely  well-cut  morn- 
ing coats  indicative  of  the  House,  or  in  what  is  some- 
times written  of  as  "  faultless  evening  dress,"  stood 
about  on  those  evenings,  they  and  their  very  quietly 
and  simply  and  expensively  dressed  little  wives,  like  a 
datum  line  amidst  lakes  and  mountains. 

I  didn't  at  first  see  the  connection  between  syste- 
matic social  reorganisation  and  arbitrary  novelties  in 
dietary  and  costume,  just  as  I  didn't  realise  why  the 
most  comprehensive  constructive  projects  should  appear 
to  be  supported  solely  by  odd  and  exceptionally  person- 
alities. On  one  of  these  evenings  a  little  group  of 
rather  jolly-looking  pretty  young  people  seated  them- 
selves for  no  particular  reason  in  a  large  circle  on  the 
floor  of  my  study,  and  engaged,  so  far  as  I  could  judge, 
in  the  game  of  Hunt  the  Meaning,  the  intellectual 
equivalent  of  Hunt  the  Slipper.  It  must  have  been 
that  same  evening  I  came  upon  an  unbleached  young 
gentleman  before  the  oval  mirror  on  the  landing  en- 
gaged in  removing  the  remains  of  an  anchovy  sandwich 
from  his  protruded  tongue — visible  ends  of  cress  hav- 
ing misled  him  into  the  belief  that  he  was  dealing  with 


RIDDLE   FOR   STATESMAN     295 

doctrinally  permissible  food.  It  was  not  unusual  to 
be  given  hand-bills  and  printed  matter  by  our  guests, 
but  there  I  had  the  advantage  over  Lewis,  who  was  too 
tactful  to  refuse  the  stuff,  too  neatly  dressed  to  pocket 
it,  and  had  no  writing-desk  available  upon  which  he 
could  relieve  himself  in  a  manner  flattering  to  the  giver. 
So  that  his  hands  got  fuller  and  fuller.  A  relentless, 
compact  little  woman  in  what  Margaret  declared  to  be 
an  extremely  expensive  black  dress  has  also  printed 
herself  on  my  memory;  she  had  set  her  heart  upon  my 
contributing  to  a  weekly  periodical  in  the  lentil  interest 
with  which  she  was  associated,  and  I  spent  much  time 
and  care  in  evading  her. 

Mingling  with  the  more  hygienic  types  were  a  num- 
ber of  Anti-Puritan  Socialists,  bulging  with  bias  against 
temperance,  and  breaking  out  against  austere  methods 
of  living  all  over  their  faces.  Their  manner  was 
packed  with  heartiness.  They  were  apt  to  choke  the 
approaches  to  the  little  buffet  Margaret  had  set  up 
downstairs,  and  there  engage  in  discussions  of  Deter- 
minism— it  always  seemed  to  be  Determinism — which 
became  heartier  and  noisier,  but  never  acrimonious  even 
in  the  small  hours.  It  seemed  impossible  to  settle 
about  this  Determinism  of  theirs — ever.  And  there 
were  worldly  Socialists  also.  I  particularly  recall  a 
large,  active,  buoyant,  lady-killing  individual  with  an 
eyeglass  borne  upon  a  broad  black  ribbon,  who  swam 
about  us  one  evening.  He  might  have  been  a  slightly 
frayed  actor,  in  his  large  frock-coat,  his  white  waist- 
coat, and  the  sort  of  black  and  white  check  trousers 
that  twinkle.  He  had  a  high-pitched  voice  with  aris- 
tocratic intonations,  and  he  seemed  to  be  in  a  perpet- 
ual state  of  interrogation.  "  What  are  we  all  he-a 
for  ?  "  he  would  ask  only  too  audibly.  "  What  a*e  we 
doing  he-a?  What's  the  connection?" 

What  was  the  connection? 


296      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

We  made  a  special  effort  with  our  last  assembly  in 
June,  1907.  We  tried  to  get  something  like  a  repre- 
sentative collection  of  the  parliamentary  leaders  of 
Socialism,  the  various  exponents  of  Socialist  thought 
and  a  number  of  Young  Liberal  thinkers  into  one  room. 
Dorvil  came,  and  Horatio  Bulch;  Featherstonehaugh 
appeared  for  ten  minutes  and  talked  charmingly  to 
Margaret  and  then  vanished  again;  there  was  Wilkins 
the  novelist  and  Toomer  and  Dr.  Tumpany.  Chris 
Robinson  stood  about  for  a  time  in  a  new  comforter, 
and  Magdeberg  and  Will  Pipes  and  five  or  six  Labour 
members.  And  on  our  side  we  had  our  particular  little 
group,  Bunting  Harblow,  Crampton,  Lewis,  all  look- 
ing as  broad-minded  and  open  to  conviction  as  they 
possibly  could,  and  even  occasionally  talking  out  from 
their  bushes  almost  boldly.  But  the  gathering  as  a 
whole  refused  either  to  mingle  or  dispute,  and  as  an 
experiment  in  intercourse  the  evening  was  a  failure. 
Unexpected  dissociations  appeared  between  Socialists 
one  had  supposed  friendly.  I  could  not  have  imagined 
it  was  possible  for  half  so  many  people  to  turn  their 
[backs  on  everybody  else  in  such  small  rooms  as  ours. 
But  the  unsaid  things  those  backs  expressed  broke  out, 
I  remarked,  with  refreshed  virulence  in  the  various 
organs  of  the  various  sections  of  the  party  next  week. 

I  talked,  I  remember,  with  Dr.  Tumpany,  a  large 
young  man  in  a  still  larger  professional  frock-coat,  and 
with  a  great  shock  of  very  fair  hair,  who  was  candidate 
for  some  North  Country  constituency.  We  discussed 
the  political  outlook,  and,  like  so  many  Socialists  at 
that  time,  he  was  full  of  vague  threatenings  against 
the  Liberal  party.  I  was  struck  by  a  thing  in  him 
that  I  had  already  observed  less  vividly  in  many  others 
of  these  Socialist  leaders,  and  which  gave  me  at  last 
a  clue  to  the  whole  business.  He  behaved  exactly  like 
a  man  in  possession  of  valuable  patent  rights,  who 


RIDDLE    FOR     STATESMAN     297 

wants  to  be  dealt  with.  He  had  an  air  of  having  a 
corner  in  ideas.  Then  it  flashed  into  my  head  that 
the  whole  Socialist  movement  was  an  attempted  corner 
in  ideas.  .  . 

§  8 

Late  that  night  I  found  myself  alone  with  Margaret 
amid  the  debris  of  the  gathering. 

I  sat  before  the  fire,  hands  in  pockets,  and  Marga- 
ret, looking  white  and  weary,  came  and  leant  upon  the 
mantel. 

"Oh,  Lord!"  said  Margaret. 

I  agreed.     Then  I  resumed  my  meditation. 

"  Ideas,"  I  said,  "  count  for  more  than  I  thought  in 
the  world." 

Margaret  regarded  me  with  that  neutral  expression 
behind  which  she  was  accustomed  to  wait  for  clues. 

"  When  you  think  of  the  height  and  depth  and 
importance  and  wisdom  of  the  Socialist  ideas,  and  see 
the  men  who  are  running  them,"  I  explained.  .  .  . 
"  A  big  system  of  ideas  like  Socialism  grows  up  out  of 
the  obvious  common  sense  of  our  present  conditions. 

It's   as    impersonal    as    science.      All    these    men 

They've  given  nothing  to  it.  They're  just  people  who 
have  pegged  out  claims  upon  a  big  intellectual  No- 
Man's-Land — and  don't  feel  quite  sure  of  the  law. 
There's  a  sort  of  quarrelsome  uneasiness.  ...  If  we 
professed  Socialism  do  you  think  they'd  welcome  us? 
Not  a  man  of  them !  They'd  feel  it  was  burglary.  .  .  ." 

"  Yes,"  said  Margaret,  looking  into  the  fire.  "  That 
is  just  what  /  felt  about  them  all  the  evening.  .  .  . 
Particularly  Dr.  Tumpany." 

"  We  mustn't  confuse  Socialism  with  the  Socialists, 
I  said;  "that's  the  moral  of  it.     I  suppose  if  God  were 
to  find  He  had  made  a  mistake  in  dates  or  something, 
and  went  back  and  annihilated  everybody  from  Owen 


298      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

onwards  who  was  in  any  way  known  as  a  Socialist 
leader  or  teacher,  Socialism  would  be  exactly  where  it 
is  and  what  it  is  to-day — a  growing  realisation  of  con- 
structive needs  in  every  man's  mind,  and  a  little  corner 
in  party  politics.  So,  I  suppose,  it  will  always  be.  ... 
But  they  were  a  damned  lot,  Margaret ! " 

I  looked  up  at  the  little  noise  she  made.  "  Twice! " 
she  said,  smiling  indulgently,  "  to-day !  "  (Even  the 
smile  was  Altiora's.) 

I  returned  to  my  thoughts.  They  were  a  damned 
human  lot.  It  was  an  excellent  word  in  that  connec- 
tion. .  .  . 

But  the  ideas  marched  on,  the  ideas  marched  on,  just 
as  though  men's  brains  were  no  more  than  stepping- 
stones,  just  as  though  some  great  brain  in  which 
we  are  all  little  cells  and  corpuscles  was  thinking 
them!  .  .  . 

"  I  don't  think  there  is  a  man  among  them  who 
makes  me  feel  he  is  trustworthy,"  said  Margaret ;  "  un- 
less it  is  Featherstonehaugh." 

I  sat  taking  in  this  proposition. 

"  They'll  never  help  us,  I  feel,"  said  Margaret. 

"Us?" 

"  The  Liberals." 

"  Oh,  damn  the  Liberals ! "  I  said.  "  They'll  never 
even  help  themselves." 

"  I  don't  think  I  could  possibly  get  on  with  any  of 
those  people,"  said  Margaret,  after  a  pause. 

She  remained  for  a  time  looking  down  at  me  and,  I 
could  feel,  perplexed  by  me,  but  I  wanted  to  go  on  with 
my  thinking,  and  so  I  did  not  look  up,  and  presently 
she  stooped  to  my  forehead  and  kissed  me  and  went 
rustling  softly  to  her  room. 

I  remained  in  my  study  for  a  long  time  with  my 
thoughts  crystallising  out.  .  .  . 

It  was  then,  I  think,  that  I  first  apprehended  clearly 


RIDDLE     FOR     STATESMAN      299 

how  that  opposition  to  which  I  have  already  alluded 
of  the  immediate  life  and  the  mental  hinterland  of  a 
man,  can  be  applied  to  public  and  social  affairs.  The 
ideas  go  on — and  no  person  or  party  succeeds  in  em- 
bodying them.  The  reality  of  human  progress  never 
comes  to  the  surface,  it  is  a  power  in  the  deeps,  an 
undertow.  It  goes  on  in  silence  while  men  think,  in 
studies  where  they  write  self-forgetfully,  in  laborator- 
ies under  the  urgency  of  an  impersonal  curiosity,  in 
the  rare  illumination  of  honest  talk,  in  moments  of  emo- 
tional insight,  in  thoughtful  reading,  but  not  in  every- 
day affairs.  Everyday  affairs  and  whatever  is  made 
an  everyday  affair,  are  transactions  of  the  ostensible 
self,  the  being  of  habits,  interests,  usage.  Temper, 
vanity,  hasty  reaction  to  imitation,  personal  feeling, 
are  their  substance.  No  man  can  abolish  his  immedi- 
ate self  and  specialise  in  the  depths;  if  he  attempt 
that,  he  simply  turns  himself  into  something  a  little 
less  than  the  common  man.  He  may  have  an  immense 
hinterland,  but  that  does  not  absolve  him  from  a  front- 
age. That  is  the  essential  error  of  the  specialist  phil- 
osopher, the  specialist  teacher,  the  specialist  publicist. 
They  repudiate  frontage;  claim  to  be  pure  hinterland. 
That  is  what  bothered  me  about  Codger,  about  those 
various  schoolmasters  who  had  prepared  me  for  life, 
about  the  Baileys  and  their  dream  of  an  official  ruling 
class.  A  human  being  who  is  a  philosopher  in  the 
first  place,  a  teacher  in  the  first  place,  or  a  statesman 
in  the  first  place,  is  thereby  and  inevitably,  though  he 
bring  God-like  gifts  to  the  pretence — a  quack.  These 
are  attempts  to  live  deep-side  shallow,  inside  out.  They 
produce  merely  a  new  pettiness.  To  understand  Social- 
ism, again,  is  to  gain  a  new  breadth  of  outlook;  to 
join  a  Socialist  organisation  is  to  join  a  narrow  cult 
which  is  not  even  tolerably  serviceable  in  presenting  or 
spreading  the  ideas  for  which  it  stands.  .  .  . 


300      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

I  perceived  I  had  got  something  quite  fundamental 
here.  It  had  taken  me  some  years  to  realise  the  true 
relation  of  the  great  constructive  ideas  that  swayed  me 
not  only  to  political  parties,  but  to  myself.  I  had  been 
disposed  to  identify  the  formulae  of  some  one  party 
with  social  construction,  and  to  regard  the  other  as 
necessarily  anti-constructive,  just  as  I  had  been  inclined 
to  follow  the  Baileys  in  the  self-righteousness  of  sup- 
posing myself  to  be  wholly  constructive.  But  I  saw 
now  that  every  man  of  intellectual  freedom  and  vigour 
is  necessarily  constructive-minded  nowadays,  and  that 
no  man  is  disinterestedly  so.  Each  one  of  us  repeats 
in  himself  the  conflict  of  the  race  between  the  splendour 
of  its  possibilities  and  its  immediate  associations.  We 
may  be  shaping  immortal  things,  but  we  must  sleep 
and  answer  the  dinner  gong,  and  have  our  salt  of  flat- 
tery and  self -approval.  In  politics  a  man  counts  not 
for  what  he  is  in  moments  of  imaginative  expansion, 
but  for  his  common  workaday,  selfish  self;  and  political 
parties  are  held  together  not  by  a  community  of  ulti- 
mate aims,  but  by  the  stabler  bond  of  an  accustomed 
life.  Everybody  almost  is  for  progress  in  general,  and 
nearly  everybody  is  opposed  to  any  change,  except  in 
so  far  as  gross  increments  are  change,  in  his  particular 
method  of  living  and  behaviour.  Every  party  stands 
essentially  for  the  interests  and  mental  usages  of  some 
definite  class  or  group  of  classes  in  the  exciting  com- 
munity, and  every  party  has  its  scientific-minded  and 
constructive  leading  section,  with  well-defined  hinter- 
lands formulating  its  social  functions  in  a  public-spir- 
ited form,  and  its  superficial-minded  following  con- 
fessing its  meannesses  and  vanities  and  prejudices.  No 
class  will  abolish  itself,  materially  alter  its  way  of 
life,  or  drastically  reconstruct  itself,  albeit  no  class 
is  indisposed  to  co-operate  in  the  unlimited  socialisa- 
tion of  any  other  class.  In  that  capacity  for  aggres- 


RIDDLE    FOR    STATESMAN      301 

sion  upon  other  classes  lies  the  essential  driving  force 
of  modern  affairs.  The  instincts,  the  persons,  the 
parties,  and  vanities  sway  and  struggle.  The  ideas 
and  understandings  march  on  and  achieve  themselves 
for  all — in  spite  of  every  one.  .  .  . 

The  methods  and  traditions  of  British  politics  main- 
tain the  form  of  two  great  parties,  with  rider  groups 
seeking  to  gain  specific  ends  in  the  event  of  a  small 
Government  majority.  These  two  main  parties  are 
more  or  less  heterogeneous  in  composition.  Each,  how- 
ever, has  certain  necessary  characteristics.  The  Con- 
servative Party  has  always  stood  quite  definitely  for 
the  established  propertied  interests.  The  land-owner, 
the  big  lawyer,  the  Established  Church,  and  latterly 
the  huge  private  monopoly  of  the  liquor  trade  which 
has  been  created  by  temperance  legislation,  are  the  es- 
sential Conservatives.  Interwoven  now  with  the  native 
wealthy  are  the  families  of  the  great  international 
usurers,  and  a  vast  miscellaneous  mass  of  financial  en- 
terprise. Outside  the  range  of  resistance  implied  by 
these  interests,  the  Conservative  Party  has  always 
shown  itself  just  as  constructive  and  collectivist  as  any 
other  party.  The  great  landowners  have  been  as  well- 
disposed  towards  the  endowment  of  higher  education, 
and  as  willing  to  co-operate  with  the  Church  in  pro- 
tective and  mildly  educational  legislation  for  children 
and  the  working  class,  as  any  political  section.  The 
financiers,  too,  are  adventurous-spirited  and  eager  for 
mechanical  progress  and  technical  efficiency.  They  are 
prepared  to  spend  public  money  upon  research,  upon 
ports  and  harbours  and  public  communications,  upon 
anitation  and  hygienic  organisation.  A  certain  rude 
benevolence  of  public  intention  is  equally  characteristic 
of  the  liquor  trade.  Provided  his  comfort  leads  to  no 
excesses  of  temperance,  the  liquor  trade  is  quite  eager 
to  see  the  common  man  prosperous,  happy,  and  with 


302      THE    NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

money  to  spend  in  a  bar.  All  sections  of  the  party  are 
aggressively  patriotic  and  favourably  inclined  to  the 
idea  of  an  upstanding,  well-fed,  and  well-exercised  pop- 
ulation in  uniform.  Of  course  there  are  reactionary 
landowners  and  old-fashioned  country  clergy,  full  of 
localised  self-importance,  jealous  even  of  the  cottager 
who  can  read,  but  they  have  neither  the  power  nor  the 
ability  to  retard  the  constructive  forces  in  the  party  as 
a  whole.  On  the  other  hand,  when  matters  point  to 
any  definitely  confiscatory  proposal,  to  the  public  own- 
ership and  collective  control  of  land,  for  example,  or 
state  mining  and  manufactures,  or  the  nationalisation 
of  the  so-called  public-house  or  extended  municipal  en- 
terprise, or  even  to  an  increase  of  the  taxation  of  prop- 
erty, then  the  Conservative  Party  presents  a  nearly 
adamantine  bar.  It  does  not  stand  for,  it  is,  the  exist- 
ing arrangement  in  these  affairs. 

Even  more  definitely  a  class  party  is  the  Labour 
Party,  whose  immediate  interest  is  to  raise  wages, 
shorten  hours  of  labor,  increase  employment,  and 
make  better  terms  for  the  working-man  tenant  and 
working-man  purchaser.  Its  leaders  are  no  doubt  con- 
structive minded,  but  the  mass  of  the  following  is  nat- 
urally suspicious  of  education  and  discipline,  hostile 
to  the  higher  education,  and — except  for  an  obvious 
antagonism  to  employers  and  property  owners — almost 
destitute  of  ideas.  What  else  can  it  be?  It  stands 
for  the  expropriated  multitude,  whose  whole  situation 
and  difficulty  arise  from  its  individual  lack  of  initiative 
and  organising  power.  It  favours  the  nationalisation 
of  land  and  capital  with  no  sense  of  the  difficulties  in- 
volved in  the  process ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  equally 
reasonable  socialisation  of  individuals  which  is  implied 
by  military  service  is  steadily  and  quite  naturally  and 
quite  illogically  opposed  by  it.  It  is  only  in  recent 
years  that  Labour  has  emerged  as  a  separate  party 


RIDDLE   FOR   STATESMAN      303 

from  the  huge  hospitable  caravanserai  of  Liberalism, 
and  there  is  still  a  very  marked  tendency  to  step  back 
again  into  that  multitudinous  assemblage. 

For  multitudinousness  has  always  been  the  Liberal 
characteristic.  Liberalism  never  has  been  nor  ever  can 
be  anything  but  a  diversified  crowd.  Liberalism  has 
to  voice  everything  that  is  left  out  by  these  other  part- 
ies. It  is  the  party  against  the  predominating  inter- 
ests. It  is  at  once  the  party  of  the  failing  and  of  the 
untried;  it  is  the  party  of  decadence  and  hope.  From 
its  nature  it  must  be  a  vague  and  planless  association 
in  comparison  with  its  antagonist,  neither  so  construc- 
tive on  the  one  hand,  nor  on  the  other  so  competent  to 
hinder  the  inevitable  constructions  of  the  civilised  state. 
Essentially  it  is  the  party  of  criticism,  the  "  Anti " 
party.  It  is  a  system  of  hostilities  and  objections  that 
somehow  achieves  at  times  an  elusive  common  soul.  It 
is  a  gathering  together  of  all  the  smaller  interests 
which  find  themselves  at  a  disadvantage  against  the 
big  established  classes,  the  leasehold  tenant  as  against 
the  landowner,  the  retail  tradesman  as  against  the  mer- 
chant and  the  moneylender,  the  Nonconformist  as 
against  the  Churchman,  the  small  employer  as  against 
the  demoralising  hospitable  publican,  the  man  without 
introductions  and  broad  connections  against  the  man 
who  has  these  things.  It  is  the  party  of  the  many 
small  men  against  the  fewer  prevailing  men.  It  has 
no  more  essential  reason  for  loving  the  Collectivist  state 
than  the  Conservatives;  the  small  dealer  is  doomed  to 
absorption  in  that  just  as  much  as  the  large  owner; 
but  it  resorts  to  the  state  against  its  antagonists  as  in 
the  middle  ages  common  men  pitted  themselves  against 
the  barons  by  siding  with  the  king.  The  Liberal 
Party  is  the  party  against  "  class  privilege  "  because  it 
represents  no  class  advantages,  but  it  is  also  the  party 
that  is  on  the  whole  most  set  against  Collective  control 


304      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

because  it  represents  no  established  responsilibity.  It 
is  constructive  only  so  far  as  its  antagonism  to  the 
great  owner  is  more  powerful  than  its  jealousy  of  the 
state.  It  organises  only  because  organisation  is  forced 
upon  it  by  the  organisation  of  its  adversaries.  It 
lapses  in  and  out  of  alliance  with  Labour  as  it  sways 
between  hostility  to  wealth  and  hostility  to  public  ex- 
penditure. .  .  . 

Every  modern  European  state  will  have  in  some 
form  or  other  these  three  parties:  the  resistent,  mili- 
tant, authoritative,  dull,  and  unsympathetic  party  of 
establishment  and  success,  the  rich  party;  the  confused, 
sentimental,  spasmodic,  numerous  party  of  the  small, 
struggling,  various,  undisciplined  men,  the  poor  man's 
party;  and  a  third  party  sometimes  detaching  itself 
from  the  second  and  sometimes  reuniting  with  it,  the 
party  of  the  altogether  expropriated  masses,  the  pro- 
letarians, Labour.  Change  Conservative  and  Liberal 
to  Republican  and  Democrat,  for  example,  and  you 
have  the  conditions  in  the  United  States.  The  Crown 
or  a  dethroned  dynasty,  the  Established  Church  or  a 
dispossessed  church,  nationalist  secessions,  the  person- 
alities of  party  leaders,  may  break  up,  complicate,  and 
confuse  the  self-expression  of  these  three  necessary 
divisions  in  the  modern  social  drama,  the  analyst  will 
make  them  out  none  the  less  for  that.  .  .  . 

And  then  I  came  back  as  if  I  came  back  to  a  refrain ; 
— the  ideas  go  on — as  though  we  are  all  no  more  than 
little  cells  and  corpuscles  in  some  great  brain  beyond 
our  understanding.  .  .  . 

So  it  was  I  sat  and  thought  my  problem  out.  .  .  . 
I  still  remember  my  satisfaction  at  seeing  things  plainly 
at  last.  It  was  like  clouds  dispersing  to  show  the  sky. 
Constructive  ideas,  of  course,  couldn't  hold  a  party 
together  alone,  "  interests  and  habits,  not  ideas,"  I  had 


RIDDLE    FOR    STATESMAN     305 

that  now,  and  so  the  great  constructive  scheme  of  So- 
cialism, invading  and  inspiring  all  parties,  was  neces- 
sarily claimed  only  by  this  collection  of  odds  and  ends, 
this  residuum  of  disconnected  and  exceptional  people. 
This  was  true  not  only  of  the  Socialist  idea,  but  of  the 
scientific  idea,  the  idea  of  veracity — of  human  confi- 
dence in  humanity — of  all  that  mattered  in  human  life 
outside  the  life  of  individuals.  .  .  .  The  only  real  party 
that  would  ever  profess  Socialism  was  the  Labour  Party, 
and  that  in  the  entirely  one-sided  form  of  an  irrespon- 
sible and  non-constructive  attack  on  property.  Social- 
ism in  that  mutilated  form,  the  teeth  and  claws  without 
the  eyes  and  brain,  I  wanted  as  little  as  I  wanted  any- 
thing in  the  world. 

Perfectly  clear  it  was,  perfectly  clear,  and  why  hadn't 
I  seen  it  before?  ...  I  looked  at  my  watch,  and  it 
was  half-past  two. 

I  yawned,  stretched,  got  up  and  went  to  bed. 

§  9 

My  ideas  about  statecraft  have  passed  through 
three  main  phases  to  the  final  convictions  that  remain. 
There  was  the  first  immediacy  of  my  dream  of  ports 
and  harbours  and  cities,  railways,  roads,  and  admin- 
istered territories — the  vision  I  had  seen  in  the  haze 
from  that  little  church  above  Locarno.  Slowly  that 
had  passed  into  a  more  elaborate  legislative  construc- 
tiveness,  which  had  led  to  my  uneasy  association  with 
the  Baileys  and  the  professedly  constructive  Young 
Liberals.  To  get  that  ordered  life  I  had  realised  the 
need  of  organisation,  knowledge,  expertness,  a  wide 
movement  of  co-ordinated  methods.  On  the  individual 
side  I  thought  that  a  life  of  urgent  industry,  temper- 
ance, and  close  attention  was  indicated  by  my  percep- 
tion of  these  ends.  I  married  Margaret  and  set  to 
work.  But  something  in  my  mind  refused  from  the 


306        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

outset  to  accept  these  determinations  as  final.  There 
was  always  a  doubt  lurking  below,  always  a  faint  re- 
sentment, a  protesting  criticism,  a  feeling  of  vitally 
important  omissions. 

I  arrived  at  last  at  the  clear  realisation  that  my 
political  associates,  and  I  in  my  association  with  them, 
were  oddly  narrow,  priggish,  and  unreal,  that  the  So- 
cialists with  whom  we  were  attempting  co-operation 
were  preposterously  irrelevant  to  their  own  theories, 
that  my  political  life  didn't  in  some  way  comprehend 
more  than  itself,  that  rather  perplexingly  I  was  missing 
the  thing  I  was  seeking.  Britten's  footnotes  to  Altiora's 
self-assertions,  her  fits  of  energetic  planning,  her 
quarrels  and  rallies  and  vanities,  his  illuminating 
attacks  on  Cramptonism  and  the  heavy-spirited  trivi- 
ality of  such  Liberalism  as  the  Children's  Charter, 
served  to  point  my  way  to  my  present  conclusions.  I 
had  been  trying  to  deal  all  along  with  human  prog- 
ress as  something  immediate  in  life,  something  to  be 
immediately  attacked  by  political  parties  and  groups 
pointing  primarily  to  that  end.  I  now  began  to  see  that 
just  as  in  my  own  being  there  was  the  rather  shallow, 
rather  vulgar,  self-seeking  careerist,  who  wore  an 
admirable  silk  hat  and  bustled  self-consciously  through 
the  lobby,  and  a  much  greater  and  indefinitely  growing 
unpublished  personality  behind  him — my  hinterland,  I 
have  called  it — so  in  human  affairs  generally  the  per- 
manent reality  is  also  a  hinterland,  which  is  never 
really  immediate,  which  draws  continually  upon  human 
experience  and  influences  human  action  more  and  more^ 
but  which  is  itself  never  the  actual  player  upon  the 
stage.  It  is  the  unseen  dramatist  who  never  takes  a 
call.  Now  it  was  just  through  the  fact  that  our  group 
about  the  Baileys  didn't  understand  this,  that  with  a 
sort  of  frantic  energy  they  were  trying  to  develop  that 
sham  expert  officialdom  of  theirs  to  plan,  regulate,  and 


RIDDLE    FOR     STATESMAN      307 

direct  the  affairs  of  humanity,  that  the  perplexing  note 
of  silliness  and  shallowness  that  I  had  always  felt  and 
felt  now  most  acutely  under  Britten's  gibes,  came  in. 
They  were  neglecting  human  life  altogether  in  social  J  fj( 
organisation. 

In  the  development  of  intellectual  modesty  lies  the 
growth  of  statesmanship,  (it  has  been  the  chronic 
mistake  of  statecraft  and  all  organising  spirits  to  at- 
tempt immediately  to  scheme  and  arrange  and  achieve- 
Priests,  schools  of  thought,  political  schemers,  leaders 
of  men,  have  always  slipped  into  the  error  of  assum- 
ing that  they  can  think  out  the  whole — or  at  any  rate 
completely  think  out  definite  parts — of  the  purpose  and 
future  of  man,  clearly  and  finally;  they  have  set  them- 
selves to  legislate  and  construct  on  that  assumption,  and, 
experiencing  the  perplexing  obduracy  and  evasions  of 
reality,  they  have  taken  to  dogma,  persecution,  train- 
ing, pruning,  secretive  education;  and  all  the  stupid- 
ities of  self-sufficient  energy.  In  the  passion  of  their 
good  intentions  they  have  not  hesitated  to  conceal  fact, 
suppress  thought,  crush  disturbing  initiatives  and  ap- 
parently detrimental  desires.  And  so  it  is  blunder- 
ingly and  wastefully,  destroying  with  the  making,  that 
any  extension  of  social  organisation  is  at  present 
achieved. 

Directly,  however,  this  idea  of  an  emancipation  from 
immediacy  is  grasped,  directly  the  dominating  import- 
ance of  this  critical,  less  personal,  mental  hinterland 
in  the  individual  and  of  the  collective  mind  in  the  race 
is  understood,  the  whole  problem  of  the  statesman  and 
his  attitude  towards  politics  gain  a  new  significance, 
and  becomes  accessible  to  a  new  series  of  solutions.  He 
wants  no  longer  to  "  fix  up,"  as  people  say,  human  af- 
fairs, but  to  devote  his  forces  to  the  development  of 
that  needed  intellectual  life  without  which  all  his  shal- 


308      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

low  attempts  at  fixing  up  are  futile.  He  ceases  to  build 
on  the  sands,  and  sets  himself  to  gather  foundations. 

You  see,  I  began  in  my  teens  by  wanting  to  plan 
and  build  cities  and  harbours  for  mankind;  I  ended  in 
the  middle  thirties  by  desiring  only  to  serve  and  in- 
crease a  general  process  of  thought,  a  process  fearless, 
critical,  real-spirited,  that  would  in  its  own  time  give 
cities,  harbours,  air,  happiness,  everything  at  a  scale 
and  quality  and  in  a  light  altogether  beyond  the  match- 
striking  imaginations  of  a  contemporary  mind.  I 
wanted  freedom  of  speech  and  suggestion,  vigour  of 
thought,  and  the  cultivation  of  that  impulse  of  veracity 
that  lurks  more  or  less  discouraged  in  every  man.  With 
that  I  felt  there  must  go  an  emotion.  I  hit  upon  a 
phrase  that  became  at  last  something  of  a  refrain  in 
my  speech  and  writings,  to  convey  the  spirit  that  I  felt 
was  at  the  very  heart  of  real  human  progress — love 
and  fine  thinking. 

(I  suppose  that  nowadays  no  newspaper  in  England 
gets  through  a  week  without  the  repetition  of  that 
phrase.) 

My  convictions  crystallised  more  and  more  definitely 
upon  this.  The  more  of  love  and  fine  thinking  the 
better  for  men,  I  said;  the  less,  the  worse.  And  upon 
this  fresh  basis  I  set  myself  to  examine  what  I  as  a 
politician  might  do.  I  perceived  I  was  at  last  finding 
an  adequate  expression  for  all  that  was  in  me,  for  those 
forces  that  had  rebelled  at  the  crude  presentations  of 
Bromstead,  at  the  secrecies  and  suppressions  of  my 
youth,  at  the  dull  unrealities  of  City  Merchants,  at 
the  conventions  and  timidities  of  the  Pinky  Dinkys, 
at  the  philosophical  recluse  of  Trinity  and  the  phrases 
and  tradition-worship  of  my  political  associates.  None 
of  these  things  were  half  alive,  and  I  wanted  life  to  be 
intensely  alive  and  awake.  I  wanted  thought  like  an 
edge  of  steel  and  desire  like  a  flame.  The  real  work 


RIDDLE    FOR    STATESMAN      309 

before  mankind  now,  I  realised  once  and  for  all,  is  the 
enlargement  of  human  expression,  the  release  and  in- 
tensification of  human  thought,  the  vivider  utilisation 
of  experience  and  the  invigoration  of  research — and 
whatever  one  does  in  human  affairs  has  or  lacks  value 
as  it  helps  or  hinders  that. 

With  that  I  had  got  my  problem  clear,  and  the  solu- 
tion, so  far  as  I  was  concerned,  lay  in  finding  out  the 
point  in  the  ostensible  life  of  politics  at  which  I  could 
most  subserve  these  ends.  I  was  still  against  the  mud- 
dles of  Bromstead,  but  I  had  hunted  them  down  now 
to  their  essential  form.  The  jerry-built  slums,  the 
roads  that  went  nowhere,  the  tarred  fences,  litigious  no- 
tice-boards and  barbed  wire  fencing,  the  litter  and  the 
heaps  of  dump,  were  only  the  outward  appearances 
whose  ultimate  realities  were  jerry-built  conclusions, 
hasty  purposes,  aimless  habits  of  thought,  and  imbe- 
cile bars  and  prohibitions  in  the  thoughts  and  souls  of 
men.  How  are  we  through  politics  to  get  at  that  con- 
fusion ? 

We  want  to  invigorate  and  reinvigorate  education. 
We  want  to  create  a  sustained  counter  effort  to  the 
perpetual  tendency  of  all  educational  organisations 
towards  classicalism,  secondary  issues,  and  the  evasion 
of  life. 

We  want  to  stimulate  the  expression  of  life  through 
art  and  literature,  and  its  exploration  through  re- 
search. 

We  want  to  make  the  best  and  finest  thought  acces- 
sible to  every  one,  and  more  particularly  to  create  and 
sustain  an  enormous  free  criticism,  without  which  art, 
literature,  and  research  alike  degenerate  into  tradition 
or  imposture. 

Then  all  the  other  problems  which  are  now  so  insol- 
uble, destitution,  disease,  the  difficulty  of  maintaining 
international  peace,  the  scarcely  faced  possibility  of 


310      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

making   life   generally    and   continually   beautiful,   be- 
come— easy.  .  .  . 

It  was  clear  to  me  that  the  most  vital  activities  in 
which  I  could  engage  would  be  those  which  most  di- 
rectly affected  the  Church,  public  habits  of  thought, 
education,  organised  research,  literature,  and  the  chan- 
nels of  general  discussion.  I  had  to  ask  myself  how 
my  position  as  Liberal  member  for  Kinghamstead 
squared  with  and  conduced  to  this  essential  work. 


CHAPTER  THE  SECOND 

SEEKING   ASSOCIATES 

§   1 

I  HAVE  told  of  my  gradual  abandonment  of  the  pre- 
tensions and  habits  of  party  Liberalism.  In  a  sense 
I  was  moving  towards  aristocracy.  Regarding  the 
development  of  the  social  and  individual  mental  hinter- 
land as  the  essential  thing  in  human  progress,  I  passed 
on  very  naturally  to  the  practical  assumption  that  we 
wanted  what  I  may  call  "  hinterlanders."  Of  course  I 
do  not  mean  by  aristocracy  the  changing  unorganised 
medley  of  rich  people  and  privileged  people  who  domi- 
nate the  civilised  world  of  to-day,  but  as  opposed  to 
this,  a  possibility  of  co-ordinating  the  will  of  the  finer 
individuals,  by  habit  and  literature,  into  a  broad  com- 
mon aim.  We  must  have  an  aristocracy — not  of  privi- 
lege, but  of  understanding  and  purpose — or  mankind 
will  fail.  I  find  this  dawning  more  and  more  clearly 
when  I  look  through  my  various  writings  of  the  years 
between  1903  and  IQlOo  I  was  already  emerging  to 
plain  statements  in  1908. 

I  reasoned  after  this  fashion.  The  line  of  human 
improvement  and  the  expansion  of  human  life  lies  in 
the  direction  of  education  and  finer  initiatives.  If 
humanity  cannot  develop  an  education  far  beyond  any- 
thing that  is  now  provided,  if  it  cannot  collectively 
invent  devices  and  solve  problems  on  a  much  richer, 
broader  scale  than  it  does  at  the  present  time,  it  can- 
not hope  to  achieve  any  very  much  finer  order  or  any 

311 


312      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

more  general  happiness  than  it  now  enjoys.  We  must 
believe,  therefore,  that  it  can  develop  such  a  training 
and  education,  or  we  must  abandon  secular  construc- 
tive hope.  And  here  my  peculiar  difficulty  as  against 
crude  democracy  comes  in.  If  humanity  at  large  is 
capable  of  that  high  education  and  those  creative  free- 
doms our  hope  demands,  much  more  must  its  better  and 
more  vigorous  types  be  so  capable.  And  if  those  who 
have  power  and  leisure  now,  and  freedom  to  respond 
to  imaginative  appeals,  cannot  be  won  to  the  idea  of 
collective  self -development,  then  the  whole  of  humanity 
cannot  be  won  to  that.  From  that  one  passes  to  what 
has  become  my  general  conception  in  politics,  the  con- 
ception of  the  constructive  imagination  working  upon 
the  vast  complex  of  powerful  people,  clever  people, 
enterprising  people,  influential  people,  amidst  whom 
power  is  diffused  to-day,  to  produce  that  self-conscious, 
highly  selective,  open-minded,  devoted  aristocratic  cul- 
ture, which  seems  to  me  to  be  the  necessary  next  phase 
in  the  development  of  human  affairs.  I  see  human 
progress,  not  as  the  spontaneous  product  of  crowds  of 
raw  minds  swayed  by  elementary  needs,  but  as  a  nat- 
ural but  elaborate  result  of  intricate  human  interde- 
pendencies,  of  human  energy  and  curiosity  liberated 
and  acting  at  leisure,  of  human  passions  and  motives, 
modified  and  redirected  by  literature  and  art.  .  .  . 

But  now  the  reader  will  understand  how  it  came 
about  that,  disappointed  by  the  essential  littleness  of 
Liberalism,  and  disillusioned  about  the  representative 
quality  of  the  professed  Socialists,  I  turned  my  mind 
more  and  more  to  a  scrutiny  of  the  big  people,  the 
wealthy  and  influential  people,  against  whom  Liberal- 
ism pits  its  forces.  I  was  asking  myself  definitely 
whether,  after  all,  it  was  not  my  particular  job  to 
work  through  them  and  not  against  them.  Was  I  not 
altogether  out  of  my  element  as  an  Anti-  ?  Weren't 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       313 

there  big  bold  qualities  about  these  people  that  common 
men  lack,  and  the  possibility  of  far  more  splendid 
dreams?  Were  they  really  the  obstacles,  might  they 
not  be  rather  the  vehicles  of  the  possible  new  braveries 
of  life? 

§    2 

The  faults  of  the  Imperialist  movement  were  obvi- 
ous enough.  The  conception  of  the  Boer  War  had 
been  clumsy  and  puerile,  the  costly  errors  of  that  strug- 
gle appalling,  and  the  subsequent  campaign  of  Mr. 
Chamberlain  for  Tariff  Reform  seemed  calculated  to 
combine  the  financial  adventurers  of  the  Empire  in 
one  vast  conspiracy  against  the  consumer.  The  cant 
of  Imperialism  was  easy  to  learn  and  use;  it  was  speed- 
ily adopted  by  all  sorts  of  base  enterprises  and  turned 
to  all  sorts  of  base  ends.  But  a  big  child  is  permit- 
ted big  mischief,  and  my  mind  was  now  continually 
returning  to  the  persuasion  that  after  all  in  some  de- 
velopment of  the  idea  of  Imperial  patriotism  might 
be  found  that  wide,  rough,  politically  acceptable  ex- 
pression of  a  constructive  dream,  capable  of  sustain- 
ing a  great  educational  and  philosophical  movement 
such  as  no  formula  of  Liberalism,  supplied.  The  fact 
that  it  readily  took  vulgar  forms  only  witnessed  to  its 
strong  popular  appeal.  Mixed  in  with  the  noisiness 
and  humbug  of  the  movement  there  appeared  a  real 
regard  for  social  efficiency,  a  real  spirit  of  animation 
and  enterprise.  There  suddenly  appeared  in  my  world 
—I  saw  them  first,  I  think,  in  1908 — a  new  sort  of 
little  boy,  a  most  agreeable  development  of  the  slouch- 
ing, cunning,  cigarette-smoking,  town-bred  youngster, 
a  small  boy  in  a  khaki  hat,  and  with  bare  knees  and 
athletic  bearing,  earnestly  engaged  in  wholesome  and 
invigorating  games  up  to  and  occasionally  a  little  be- 
yond his  strength — the  Boy  Scout.  I  liked  the  Boy 


314      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

Scout,  and  I  find  it  difficult  to  express  how  much  it 
mattered  to  me,  with  my  growing  bias  in  favour  of 
deliberate  national  training,  that  Liberalism  hadn't 
been  able  to  produce,  and  had  indeed  never  attempted 
to  produce,  anything  of  this  kind. 


In  those  days  there  existed  a  dining  club  called  — 
there  was  some  lost  allusion  to  the  exorcism  of  party 
feeling  in  its  title  —  the  Pentegram  Circle.  It  included 
Bailey  and  Dayton  and  myself,  Sir  Herbert  Thorns, 
Lord  Charles  Kindling,  Minns  the  poet,  Gerbault  the 
big  railway  man,  Lord  Gane,  fresh  from  the  settlement 
of  Framboya,  and  Rumbold,  who  later  became  Home 
Secretary  and  left  us.  We  were  men  of  all  parties  and 
very  various  experiences,  and  our  object  was  to  discuss 
the  welfare  of  the  Empire  in  a  disinterested  spirit. 
We  dined  monthly  at  the  Mermaid  in  Westminster, 
and  for  a  couple  of  years  we  kept  up  an  average  at- 
tendance of  ten  out  of  fourteen.  The  dinner-time  was 
given  up  to  desultory  conversation,  and  it  is  odd  how 
warm  and  good  the  social  atmosphere  of  that  little 
gathering  became  as  time  went  on;  then  over  the  des- 
sert, so  soon  as  the  waiters  had  swept  away  the  crumbs 
and  ceased  to  fret  us,  one  of  us  would  open  with  per- 
haps fifteen  or  twenty  minutes'  exposition  of  some  spe- 
cially prepared  question,  and  after  him  we  would  de- 
liver ourselves  in  turn,  each  for  three  or  four  minutes. 
When  every  one  present  had  spoken  once  talk  became 
general  again,  and  it  was  rare  we  emerged  upon  Hen- 
don  Street  before  midnight.  Sometimes,  as  my  house 
was  conveniently  near,  a  knot  of  men  would  come  home 
with  me  and  go  on  talking  and  smoking  in  my  dining- 
room  until  two  or  three.  We  had  Fred  Neal,  that  wild 
Irish  journalist,  among  us  towards  the  end,  and  his 
stupendous  flow  of  words  materially  prolonged  our  clos- 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       315 

ing    discussions    and     made    our    continuance    impos- 
sible. 

I  learned  very  much  and  very  many  things  at  those 
dinners,  but  more  particularly  did  I  become  familiar- 
ised with  the  habits  of  mind  of  such  men  as  Neal, 
Crupp,  Gane,  and  the  one  or  two  other  New  Imperial- 
ists who  belonged  to  us.  They  were  nearly  all  like 
Bailey  Oxford  men,  though  mostly  of  a  younger  gen- 
eration, and  they  were  all  mysteriously  and  inexplic- 
ably advocates  of  Tariff  Reform,  as  if  it  were  the  prin- 
cipa.'  instead  of  at  best  a  secondary  aspect  of  construc- 
tive policy.  They  seemed  obsessed  by  the  idea  that 
streams  of  trade  could  be  diverted  violently  so  as  to 
link  the  parts  of  the  Empire  by  common  interests,  and 
they  were  persuaded,  I  still  think  mistakenly,  that 
Tariff  Reform  would  have  an  immense  popular  appeal. 
They  were  also  very  keen  on  military  organisation,  and 
with  a  curious  little  martinet  twist  in  their  minds  that 
boded  ill  for  that  side  of  public  liberty.  So  much 
against  them.  But  they  were  disposed  to  spend  money 
much  more  generously  on  education  and  research  of  all 
sorts  than  our  formless  host  of  Liberals  seemed  likely 
to  do;  and  they  were  altogether  more  accessible  than 
the  Young  Liberals  to  bold,  constructive  ideas  affect- 
ing the  universities  and  upper  classes.  The  Liberals 
are  abjectly  afraid  of  the  universities.  I  found  my- 
self constantly  falling  into  line  with  these  men  in  our 
discussions,  and  more  and  more  hostile  to  Dayton's 
sentimentalising  evasions  of  definite  schemes  and  Minns' 
trust  in  such  things  as  the  "  Spirit  of  our  People  "  and 
the  "  General  Trend  of  Progress."  It  wasn't  that  I 
thought  them  very  much  righter  than  their  opponents; 
I  believe  all  definite  party  "  sides "  at  any  time  are 
bound  to  be  about  equally  right  and  equally  lop-sided; 
but  that  I  thought  I  could  get  more  out  of  them  and 
what  was  more  important  to  me,  more  out  of  myself  if 
I  co-operated  with  them.  By  1908  I  had  already  ar- 


316      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

rived  at  a  point  where  I  could  be  definitely  considering 
a  transfer  of  my  political  allegiance. 

These  abstract  questions  are  inseparably  interwoven 
with  my  memory  of  a  shining  long  white  table,  and 
our  hock  bottles  and  burgundy  bottles,  and  bottles  of 
Perrier  and  St.  Galmier  and  the  disturbed  central 
trophy  of  dessert,  and  scattered  glasses  and  nut-shells 
and  cigarette-ends  and  menu-cards  used  for  memo- 
randa. I  see  old  Dayton  sitting  back  and  cocking  his 
eye  to  the  ceiling  in  a  way  he  had  while  he  threw  warmth 
into  the  ancient  platitudes  of  Liberalism,  and  Minns 
leaning  forward,  and  a  little  like  a  cockatoo  with  a 
taste  for  confidences,  telling  us  in  a  hushed  voice  of 
his  faith  in  the  Destiny  of  Mankind.  Thorns  lounges, 
rolling  his  round  face  and  round  eyes  from  speaker  to 
speaker  and  sounding  the  visible  depths  of  misery  when- 
ever Neal  begins.  Gerbault  and  Gane  were  given  to 
conversation  in  undertones,  and  Bailey  pursued  mys- 
terious purposes  in  lisping  whispers.  It  was  Crupp 
attracted  me  most.  He  had,  as  people  say,  his  eye  on 
me  from  the  beginning.  He  used  to  speak  at  me,  and 
drifted  into  a  custom  of  coming  home  with  me  very 
regularly  for  an  after-talk. 

He  opened  his  heart  to  me. 

"  Neither  of  us,"  he  said,  "  are  dukes,  and  neither  of 
us  are  horny-handed  sons  of  toil.  We  want  to  get  hold 
of  the  handles,  and  to  do  that,  one  must  go  where  the 
power  is,  and  give  it  just  as  constructive  a  twist  as  we 
can.  That's  my  Toryism." 

"  Is  it  Kindling's — or  Gerbault's  ?  " 

"  No.  But  theirs  is  soft,  and  mine's  hard.  Mine 
will  wear  theirs  out.  You  and  I  and  Bailey  are  all 
after  the  same  thing,  and  why  aren't  we  working  to- 
gether? " 

"  Are  you  a  Confederate  ?  "  I  asked  suddenly. 

"  That's  a  secret  nobody  tells/'  he  said. 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       317 

"What  are  the  Confederates  after?" 

"  Making  aristocracy  work,  I  suppose.  Just  as,  I 
gather,  you  want  to  do."  .  .  . 

The  Confederates  were  being  heard  of  at  that  time. 
They  were  at  once  attractive  and  repellent  to  me,  an 
odd  secret  society  whose  membership  nobody  knew, 
pledged,  it  was  said,  to  impose  Tariff  Reform  and  an 
ample  constructive  policy  upon  the  Conservatives.  In 
the  press,  at  any  rate,  they  had  an  air  of  deliberately 
organised  power.  I  have  no  doubt  the  rumour  of  them 
greatly  influenced  my  ideas.  .  .  . 

In  the  end  I  made  some  very  rapid  decisions,  but 
for  nearly  two  years  I  was  hesitating.  Hesitations 
were  inevitable  in  such  a  matter.  I  was  not  dealing 
with  any  simple  question  of  principle,  but  with  elusive 
and  fluctuating  estimates  of  the  trend  of  diverse  forces 
and  of  the  nature  of  my  own  powers.  All  through  that 
period  I  was  asking  over  and  over  again:  how  far  are 
these  Confederates  mere  dreamers?  How  far — and 
this  was  more  vital — are  they  rendering  lip-service  to 
social  organisations?  Is  it  true  they  desire  war  be- 
cause it  confirms  the  ascendency  of  their  class?  How 
far  can  Conservatism  be  induced  to  plan  and  construct 
before  it  resists  the  thrust  towards  change.  Is  it  really 
in  bulk  anything  more  than  a  mass  of  prejudice  and 
conceit,  cynical  indulgence,  and  a  hard  suspicion  of  and 
hostility  to  the  expropriated  classes  in  the  community? 
That  is  a  research  which  yields  no  statistics,  an 
enquiry  like  asking  what  is  the  ruling  colour  of  a 
chameleon.  The  shadowy  answer  varied  with  my 
health,  varied  with  my  mood  and  the  conduct  of  the 
people  I  was  watching.  How  fine  can  people  be?  How 
generous? — not  incidentally,  but  all  round?  How  far 
can  you  educate  sons  beyond  the  outlook  of  their  fath- 
ers, and  how  far  lift  a  rich,  proud,  self-indulgent  class 
above  the  protests  of  its  business  agents  and  solicitors 


318      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

and  its  own  habits  and  vanity?  Is  chivalry  in  a  class 
possible? — was  it  ever,  indeed,  or  will  it  ever  indeed  be 
possible?  Is  the  progress  that  seems  attainable  in 
certain  directions  worth  the  retrogression  that  may  be 
its  price? 

§    4 

It  was  to  the  Pentagram  Circle  that  I  first  broached 
the  new  conceptions  that  were  developing  in  my  mind. 
I  count  the  evening  of  my  paper  the  beginning  of  the 
movement  that  created  the  Blue  Weekly  and  our  wing 
of  the  present  New  Tory  party.  I  do  that  without  any 
excessive  egotism,  because  my  essay  was  no  solitary 
man's  production;  it  was  my  reaction  to  forces  that 
had  come  to  me  very  large  through  my  fellow-mem- 
bers; its  quick  reception  by  them  showed  that  I  was, 
so  to  speak,  merely  the  first  of  the  chestnuts  to  pop. 
The  atmospheric  quality  of  the  evening  stands  out  very 
vividly  in  my  memory.  The  night,  I  remember,  was 
warmly  foggy  when  after  midnight  we  went  to  finish 
our  talk  at  my  house. 

We  had  recently  changed  the  rules  of  the  club  to 
admit  visitors,  and  so  it  happened  that  I  had  brought 
Britten,  and  Crupp  introduced  Arnold  Shoesmith,  my 
former  schoolfellow  at  City  Merchants,  and  now  the 
wealthy  successor  of  his  father  and  elder  brother.  I 
remember  his  heavy,  inexpressively  handsome  face 
lighting  to  his  rare  smile  at  the  sight  of  me,  and  how 
little  I  dreamt  of  the  tragic  entanglement  that  was 
destined  to  involve  us  both.  Gane  was  present,  and 
Esmeer,  a  newly-added  member,  but  I  think  Bailey  was 
absent.  Either  he  was  absent,  or  he  said  something  so 
entirely  characteristic  and  undistinguished  that  it  has 
left  no  impression  on  my  mind. 

I  had  broken  a  little  from  the  traditions  of  the  club 
even  in  my  title,  which  was  deliberately  a  challenge  to 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       319 

the  liberal  idea:  it  was,  "The  World  Exists  for  Ex- 
ceptional People/'  It  is  not  the  title  I  should  choose 
now — for  since  that  time  I  have  got  my  phrase  of 
"mental  hinterlander  "  into  journalistic  use.  I  should 
say  now,  "  The  World  Exists  for  Mental  Hinterland." 

The  notes  I  made  of  that  opening  have  long  since 
vanished  with  a  thousand  other  papers,  but  some  odd 
chance  has  preserved  and  brought  with  me  to  Italy  the 
menu  for  the  evening;  its  back  black  with  the  scrawled 
notes  I  made  of  the  discussion  for  my  reply.  I  found 
it  the  other  day  among  some  letters  from  Margaret 
and  a  copy  of  the  1909  Report  of  the  Poor  Law  Com- 
mission, also  rich  with  pencilled  marginalia. 

My  opening  was  a  criticism  of  the  democratic  idea 
and  method,  upon  lines  such  as  I  have  already  suf- 
ficiently indicated  in  the  preceding  sections.  I  remem- 
ber how  old  Dayton  fretted  in  his  chair,  and  tushed 
and  pished  at  that,  even  as  I  gave  it,  and  afterwards 
we  were  treated  to  one  of  his  platitudinous  harangues, 
he  sitting  back  in  his  chair  with  that  small  obstinate 
eye  of  his  fixed  on  the  ceiling,  and  a  sort  of  cadaverous 
glow  upon  his  face,  repeating — quite  regardless  of  all 
my  reasoning  and  all  that  had  been  said  by  others  in 
the  debate — the  sacred  empty  phrases  that  were  his 
soul's  refuge  from  reality.  "  You  may  think  it  very 
clever,"  he  said  with  a  nod  of  his  head  to  mark  his 
sense  of  his  point,  "  not  to  Trust  in  the  People.  I  do." 
And  so  on.  Nothing  in  his  life  or  work  had  ever  shown 
that  he  did  trust  in  the  people,  but  that  was  beside  the 
mark.  He  was  the  party  Liberal,  and  these  were  the 
party  incantations. 

After  my  preliminary  attack  on  vague  democracy 
I  went  on  to  show  that  all  human  life  was  virtually 
aristocratic;  people  must  either  recognise  aristocracy 
in  general  or  else  follow  leaders,  which  is  aristocracy 
in  particular,  and  so  I  came  to  my  point  that  the  real- 


320      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

ity  of  human  progress  lay  necessarily  through  the  es- 
tablishment of  freedoms  for  the  human  best  and  a  col- 
lective receptivity  and  understanding.  There  was  a 
disgusted  grunt  from  Dayton,  "  Superman  rubbish — 
Nietzsche.  Shaw !  Ugh !  "  I  sailed  on  over  him  to 
my  next  propositions.  The  prime  essential  in  a  pro- 
gressive civilisation  was  the  establishment  of  a  more 
effective  selective  process  for  the  privilege  of  higher 
education,  and  the  very  highest  educational  opportunity 
for  the  educable.  We  were  too  apt  to  patronise 
scholarship  winners,  as  though  a  scholarship  was  toffee 
given  as  a  reward  for  virtue.  It  wasn't  any  reward  at 
all;  it  was  an  invitation  to  capacity.  We  had  no  more 
right  to  drag  in  virtue,  or  any  merit  but  quality,  than 
we  had  to  involve  it  in  a  search  for  the  tallest  man, 
We  didn't  want  a  mere  process  for  the  selection  of 
good  as  distinguished  from  gifted  and  able  boys — 
"  No,  you  don't/'  from  Dayton — we  wanted  all  the 
brilliant  stuff  in  the  world  concentrated  upon  the  de- 
velopment of  the  world.  Just  to  exasperate  Dayton 
further  I  put  in  a  plea  for  gifts  as  against  character 
in  educational,  artistic,  and  legislative  work.  "  Good 
teaching,"  I  said,  "  is  better  than  good  conduct.  We 
are  becoming  idiotic  about  character." 

Dayton  was  too  moved  to  speak.  He  slewed  round 
upon  me  an  eye  of  agonised  aversion. 

I  expatiated  on  the  small  proportion  of  the  available 
ability  that  is  really  serving  humanity  to-day.  "  I 
suppose  to-day  all  the  thought,  all  the  art,  all  the  incre- 
ments of  knowledge  that  matter,  are  supplied  so  far  as 
the  English-speaking  community  is  concerned  by — how 
many? — by  three  or  four  thousand  individuals.  ('Less/ 
said  Thorns.)  To  be  more  precise,  by  the  mental 
hinterlands  of  three  or  four  thousand  individuals.  We 
who  know  some  of  the  band  entertain  no  illusions  as 
to  their  innate  rarity.  We  know  that  they  are  just  the 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       321 

few  out  of  many,  the  few  who  got  in  our  world  of 
chance  and  confusion,  the  timely  stimulus,  the  apt  sug- 
gestion at  the  fortunate  moment,  the  needed  training, 
the  leisure.  The  rest  are  lost  in  the  crowd,  fail  through 
the  defects  of  their  qualities,  become  commonplace 
workmen  and  second-rate  professional  men,  marry 
commonplace  wives,  are  as  much  waste  as  the  driftage 
of  superfluous  pollen  in  a  pine  forest  is  waste." 

"  Decent  honest  lives !  "  said  Dayton  to  his  bread- 
crumbs, with  his  chin  in  his  necktie.  "Waste!" 

"  And  the  people  who  do  get  what  we  call  oppor- 
tunity get  it  usually  in  extremely  limited  and  cramping 
forms.  No  man  lives  a  life  of  intellectual  productivity 
alone;  he  needs  not  only  material  and  opportunity, 
but  helpers,  resonators.  Round  and  about  what  I 
might  call  the  real  men,  you  want  the  sympathetic  co- 
operators,  who  help  by  understanding.  It  isn't  that 
our — salt  of  three  or  four  thousand  is  needlessly  rare; 
it  is  sustained  by  far  too  small  and  undifferentiated  a 
public.  Most  of  the  good  men  we  know  are  not  really 
doing  the  very  best  work  of  their  gifts;  nearly  all  are 
a  little  adapted,  most  are  shockingly  adapted  to  some 
second-best  use.  Now,  I  take  it,  this  is  the  very  cen- 
tre and  origin  of  the  muddle,  futility,  and  unhappiness 
that  distresses  us ;  it's  the  cardinal  problem  of  the  state 
— to  discover,  develop,  and  use  the  exceptional  gifts 
of  men.  And  I  see  that  best  done — I  drift  more  and 
more  away  from  the  common  stuff  of  legislative  and 
administrative  activity — by  a  quite  revolutionary  de- 
velopment of  the  educational  machinery,  but  by  a  still 
more  unprecedented  attempt  to  keep  science  going,  to 
keep  literature  going,  and  to  keep  what  is  the  neces- 
sary spur  of  all  science  and  literature,  an  intelligent 
and  appreciative  criticism  going.  You  know  none  of 
these  things  have  ever  been  kept  going  hitherto;  they've 
come  unexpectedly  and  inexplicably." 


322      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

"  Hear,  hear !  "  from  Dayton,  cough,  nodding  of  the 
head,  and  an  expression  of  mystical  profundity. 

"  They've  lit  up  a  civilisation  and  vanished,  to  give 
place  to  darkness  again.  Now  the  modern  state  doesn't 
mean  to  go  back  to  darkness  again — and  so  it's  got  to 
keep  its  light  burning."  I  went  on  to  attack  the  pres- 
ent organisation  of  our  schools  and  universities,  which 
seemed  elaborately  designed  to  turn  the  well-behaved, 
uncritical,  and  uncreative  men  of  each  generation  into 
the  authoritative  leaders  of  the  next,  and  I  suggested 
remedies  upon  lines  that  I  have  already  indicated  in 
the  earlier  chapters  of  this  story.  .  .  . 

So  far  I  had  the  substance  of  the  club  with  me,  but 
I  opened  new  ground  and  set  Crupp  agog  by  confess- 
ing my  doubt  from  which  party  or  combination  of 
groups  these  developments  of  science  and  literature  and 
educational  organisation  could  most  reasonably  be  ex- 
pected. I  looked  up  to  find  Crupp's  dark  little  eye  in- 
tent upon  me. 

There  I  left  it  to  them. 

We  had  an  astonishingly  good  discussion;  Neal  burst 
once,  but  we  emerged  from  his  flood  after  a  time,  and 
Dayton  had  his  interlude.  The  rest  was  all  close,  keen 
examination  of  my  problem. 

I  see  Crupp  now  with  his  arm  bent  before  him  on 
the  table  in  a  way  we  had,  as  though  it  was  jointed 
throughout  its  length  like  a  lobster's  antenna,  his 
plump,  short-fingered  hand  crushing  up  a  walnut  shell 
into  smaller  and  smaller  fragments.  "  Remington,"  he 
said,  "  has  given  us  the  data  for  a  movement,  a  really 
possible  movement.  It's  not  only  possible,  but  neces- 
sary— urgently  necessary,  I  think,  if  the  Empire  is 
to  go  on." 

"  We're  working  altogether  too  much  at  the  social 
basement  in  education  and  training,"  said  Gane. 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       323 

"  Remington  is  right  about  our  neglect  of  the  higher 
levels." 

Britten  made  a  good  contribution  with  an  analysis 
of  what  he  called  the  spirit  of  a  country  and  what  made 
it.  "  The  modern  community  needs  its  serious  men  to 
be  artistic  and  its  artists  to  be  taken  seriously/'  I  re- 
member his  saying.  "  The  day  has  gone  by  for  either 
dull  responsibility  or  merely  witty  art." 

I  remember  very  vividly  how  Shoesmith  harped  on 
an  idea  I  had  thrown  out  of  using  some  sort  of  review 
or  weekly  to  express  and  elaborate  these  conceptions 
of  a  new,  severer,  aristocratic  culture. 

"  It  would  have  to  be  done  amazingly  well,"  said 
Britten,  and  my  mind  went  back  to  my  school  days 
and  that  ancient  enterprise  of  ours,  and  how  Cossing- 
ton  had  rushed  it.  Well,  Cossington  had  too  many 
papers  nowadays  to  interfere  with  us,  and  we  perhaps 
had  learnt  some  defensive  devices. 

"  But  this  thing  has  to  be  linked  to  some  political 
party,"  said  Crupp,  with  his  eye  on  me.  "You  can't 
get  away  from  that.  The  Liberals,"  he  added,  "  have 
never  done  anything  for  research  or  literature." 

"  They  had  a  Royal  Commission  on  the  Dramatic 
Censorship,"  said  Thorns,  with  a  note  of  minute  fair- 
ness. "  It  shows  what  they  were  made  of,"  he  added. 

"  It's  what  I've  told  Remington  again  and  again," 
said  Crupp,  "  we've  got  to  pick  up  the  tradition  of 
aristocracy,  reorganise  it,  and  make  it  work.  But  he's 
certainly  suggested  a  method." 

"  There  won't  be  much  aristocracy  to  pick  up,"  said 
Dayton,  darkly  to  the  ceiling,  "  if  the  House  of  Lords 
throws  out  the  Budget." 

"  All  the  more  reason  for  picking  it  up,"  said  Neal. 
"  For  we  can't  do  without  it." 

"  Will  they  go  to  the  bad,  or  will  they  rise  from  the 


324      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

ashes,  aristocrats  indeed — if  the  Liberals  come  in  over- 
whelmingly? "  said  Britten. 

"  It's  we  who  might  decide  that,,"  said  Crupp,  in- 
sidiously. 

"  I  agree/'  said  Gane. 

"  No  one  can  tell"  said  Thorns.  "  I  doubt  if  they 
will  get  beaten." 

It  was  an  odd,  fragmentary  discussion  that  night. 
We  were  all  with  ideas  in  our  minds  at  once  fine  and 
imperfect.  We  threw  out  suggestions  that  showed 
themselves  at  once  far  inadequate,  and  we  tried  to 
qualify  them  by  minor  self-contradictions.  Britten,  I 
think,  got  more  said  than  any  one.  "You  all  seem  to 
think  you  want  to  organise  people,  particular  groups 
and  classes  of  individuals,"  he  insisted.  "  It  isn't  that. 
That's  the  standing  error  of  politicians.  You  want  to 
organise  a  culture.  Civilisation  isn't  a  matter  of  con- 
crete groupings;  it's  a  matter  of  prevailing  ideas.  The 
problem  is  how  to  make  bold,  clear  ideas  prevail.  The 
question  for  Remington  and  us  is  just  what  groups  of 
people  will  most  help  this  culture  forward." 

"  Yes,  but  how  are  the  Lords  going  to  behave  ? " 
said  Crupp.  "You  yourself  were  asking  that  a  little 
while  ago/' 

"  If  they  win  or  if  they  lose,"  Gane  maintained, 
"there  will  be  a  movement  to  reorganise  aristocracy — 
Reform  of  the  House  of  Lords,  they'll  call  the  political 
form  of  it." 

"  Bailey  thinks  that,"  said  some  one. 

"  The  labour  people  want  abolition,"  said  some  one. 
*'  Let  'em/'  said  Thorns. 

He  became  audible,  sketching  a  possibility  of  action. 

*'  Suppose  all  of  us  were  able  to  work  together.  It's 
just  one  of  those  indeterminate,  confused,  eventful 
times  ahead  when  a  steady  jet  of  ideas  might  produce 
enormous  results." 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       325 

"  Leave  me  out  of  it,"  said  Dayton,  "  if  you  please." 

"We   should,"    said   Thorns   under   his   breath. 

I  took  up  Crupp's  initiative,  I  remember,  and  ex- 
panded it. 

"  I  believe  we  could  do — extensive  things,"  I  insisted. 

"  Revivals  and  revisions  of  Toryism  have  been  tried 
so  often,"  said  Thorns,  "  from  the  Young  England 
movement  onward." 

"  Not  one  but  has  produced  its  enduring  effects,"  I 
said.  "  It's  the  peculiarity  of  English  conservatism 
that  it's  persistently  progressive  and  rejuvenescent." 

I  think  it  must  have  been  about  that  point  that  Day- 
ton fled  our  presence,  after  some  clumsy  sentence  that 
I  decided  upon  reflection  was  intended  to  remind  me 
of  my  duty  to  my  party. 

Then  I  remember  Thorns  firing  doubts  at  me 
obliquely  across  the  table.  "  You  can't  run  a  country 
through  its  spoilt  children,"  he  said.  "What  you  call 
aristocrats  are  really  spoilt  children.  They've  had  too 
much  of  everything,  except  bracing  experience." 

"  Children  can  always  be  educated,"  said  Crupp. 

"  I  said  spoilt  children,"  said  Thorns. 

"Look  here,  Thorns!"  said  I.  "If  this  Budget 
row  leads  to  a  storm,  and  these  big  people  get  their 
power  clipped,  what's  going  to  happen?  Have  you 
thought  of  that?  When  they  go  out  lock,  stock,  and 
barrel,  who  comes  in  ?  " 

"  Nature  abhors  a  Vacuum,"  said  Crupp,  supporting 
me. 

"  Bailey's  trained  officials,"  suggested  Gane. 

"Quacks  with  a  certificate  of  approval  from  Alti- 
ora,"  said  Thorns.  "  I  admit  the  horrors  of  the  al- 
ternative. There'd  be  a  massacre  in  three  years." 

"  One  may  go  on  trying  possibilities  for  ever,"  I  said. 
"  One  thing  emerges.  Whatever  accidents  happen,  our 
civilisation  needs,  and  almost  consciously  needs,  a  cul- 


326      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

ture  of  fine  creative  minds,  and  all  the  necessary  toler- 
ances, opennesses,  considerations,  that  march  with  that. 
For  my  own  part,  I  think  that  is  the  Most  Vital  Thing. 
Build  your  ship  of  state  as  you  will;  get  your  men  as 
you  will;  I  concentrate  on  what  is  clearly  the  affair 
of  my  sort  of  man, — I  want  to  ensure  the  quality  of 
the  quarter  deck." 

"  Hear,  hear !  "  said  Shoesmith,  suddenly — his  first 
remark  for  a  long  time.  "A  first-rate  figure,'*  said 
Shoesmith,  gripping  it. 

"  Our  danger  is  in  missing  that,"  I  went  on.  "  Mud- 
dle isn't  ended  by  transferring  power  from  the  mud- 
dle-headed few  to  the  muddle-headed  many,  and  then 
cheating  the  many  out  of  it  again  in  the  interests  of  a 
bureaucracy  of  sham  experts.  But  that  seems  the  limit 
of  the  liberal  imagination.  There  is  no  real  progress 
in  a  country,  except  a  rise  in  the  level  of  its  free  in- 
tellectual activity.  All  other  progress  is  secondary  and 
dependant.  If  you  take  on  Bailey's  dreams  of  effici- 
ent machinery  and  a  sort  of  fanatical  discipline  with  no 
free-moving  brains  behind  it,  confused  ugliness  becomes 
rigid  ugliness, — that's  all.  No  doubt  things  are  mov- 
ing from  looseness  to  discipline,  and  from  irresponsible 
controls  to  organised  controls — and  also  and  rather 
contrariwise  everything  is  becoming  as  people  say, 
democratised;  but  all  the  more  need  in  that,  for  an  ark 
in  which  the  living  element  may  be  saved." 

"  Hear,  hear !  "  said  Shoesmith,  faint  but  pursuing. 

It  must  have  been  in  my  house  afterwards  that  Shoe- 
emith  became  noticeable.  He  seemed  trying  to  say 
something  vague  and  difficult  that  he  didn't  get  said 
at  all  on  that  occasion.  "We  could  do  immense  things 
[with  a  weekly,"  he  repeated,  echoing  Neal,  I  think. 
And  there  he  left  off  and  became  a  mute  expressive- 
ness, and  it  was  only  afterwards,  when  I  was  in 
that  I  saw  we  had  our  capitalist  in  our  hands.  .  . 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       327 

We  parted  that  night  on  my  doorstep  in  a  tremendous 
glow — but  in  that  sort  of  glow  one  doesn't  act  upon 
without  much  reconsideration,  and  it  was  some  months 
before  I  made  my  decision  to  follow  up  the  indica- 
tions of  that  opening  talk. 

§    5 

I  find  my  thoughts  lingering  about  the  Pentagram 
Circle.  In  my  developments  it  played  a  large  part,  not 
so  much  by  starting  new  trains  of  thought  as  by  con- 
firming the  practicability  of  things  I  had  already  hesi- 
tatingly entertained.  Discussion  with  these  other  men 
so  prominently  involved  in  current  affairs  endorsed 
views  that  otherwise  would  have  seemed  only  a  little 
less  remote  from  actuality  than  the  guardians  of  Plato 
or  the  labour  laws  of  More.  Among  other  questions 
that  were  never  very  distant  from  our  discussions,  that 
came  apt  to  every  topic,  was  the  true  significance  of 
democracy,  Tariff  Reform  as  a  method  of  international 
hostility,  and  the  imminence  of  war.  On  the  first  is- 
sue I  can  still  recall  little  Bailey,  glib  and  winking, 
explaining  that  democracy  was  really  just  a  dodge  for 
getting  assent  to  the  ordinances  of  the  expert  official 
by  means  of  the  polling  booth.  "  If  they  don't  like 
things,"  said  he,  "  they  can  vote  for  the  opposition 
candidate  and  see  what  happens  then — and  that,  you 
see,  is  why  we  don't  want  proportional  representation 
to  let  in  the  wild  men."  I  opened  my  eyes — the  lids 
had  dropped  for  a  moment  under  the  caress  of  those 
smooth  sounds — to  see  if  Bailey's  artful  forefinger 
wasn't  at  the  side  of  his  predominant  nose. 

Tke  international  situation  exercised  us  greatly. 
Our  meetings  were  pervaded  by  the  feeling  that  all 
things  moved  towards  a  day  of  reckoning  with  Ger- 
many, and  I  was  largely  instrumental  in  keeping  up 


328      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

the  suggestion  that  India  was  in  a  state  of  unstable 
equilibrium,  that  sooner  or  later  something  must  hap- 
pen there — something  very  serious  to  our  Empire. 
Dayton  frankly  detested  these  topics.  He  was  full  of 
that  old  Middle  Victorian  persuasion  that  whatever  is 
inconvenient  or  disagreeable  to  the  English  mind  could 
be  annihilated  by  not  thinking  about  it.  He  used  to 
sit  low  in  his  chair  and  look  mulish.  "  Militarism,"  he 
would  declare  in  a  tone  of  the  utmost  moral  fervour, 
"  is  a  curse.  It's  an  unmitigated  curse."  Then  he 
would  cough  shortly  and  twitch  his  head  back  and 
frown,  and  seem  astonished  beyond  measure  that  after 
this  conclusive  statement  we  could  still  go  on  talking 
of  war. 

All  our  Imperialists  were  obsessed  by  the  thought  of 
international  conflict,  and  their  influence  revived  for 
a  time  those  uneasinesses  that  had  been  aroused  in  me 
for  the  first  time  by  my  continental  journey  with 
Willersley  and  by  Meredith's  "One  of  Our  Conquer- 
ors." That  quite  justifiable  dread  of  a  punishment  for 
all  the  slackness,  mental  dishonesty,  presumption,  mer- 
cenary respectability  and  sentimentalised  commercial- 
ism of  the  Victorian  period,  at  the  hands  of  the  better 
organised,  more  vigorous,  and  now  far  more  highly 
civilised  peoples  of  Central  Europe,  seemed  to  me  to 
have  both  a  good  and  bad  series  of  consequences.  It 
seemed  the  only  thing  capable  of  bracing  English 
minds  to  education,  sustained  constructive  effort  and 
research;  but  on  the  other  hand  it  produced  the  quality 
of  a  panic,  hasty  preparation,  impatience  of  thought, 
a  wasteful  and  sometimes  quite  futile  immediacy.  In 
1909,  for  example,  there  was  a  vast  clamour  for  eight 
additional  Dreadnoughts — 

"We  want  eight 
And  we  won't  wait/' 


SEEKING  ASSOCIATES        329 

but  no  clamour  at  all  about  our  national  waste  of  in- 
ventive talent,  our  mean  standard  of  intellectual  at- 
tainment, our  disingenuous  criticism,  and  the  conse- 
quent failure  to  distinguish  men  of  the  quality  needed 
to  carry  on  the  modern  type  of  war.  Almost  uni- 
versally we  have  the  wrong  men  in  our  places  of  re- 
sponsibility and  the  right  men  in  no  place  at  all,  almost 
universally  we  have  poorly  qualified,  hesitating,  and 
resentful  subordinates,  because  our  criticism  is  worth- 
less and,  so  habitually  as  to  be  now  almost  uncon- 
sciously, dishonest.  Germany  is  beating  England  in  every 
matter  upon  which  competition  is  possible,  because  she 
attended  sedulously  to  her  collective  mind  for  sixty 
pregnant  years,  because  in  spite  of  tremendous  defects 
she  is  still  far  more  anxious  for  quality  in  achievement 
than  we  are.  I  remember  saying  that  in  my  paper. 
From  that,  I  remember,  I  went  on  to  an  image  that 
had  flashed  into  my  mind.  "  The  British  Empire,"  I 
said,  "is  like  some  of  those  early  vertebrated  monsters, 
the  Brontosaurus  and  the  Atlantosaurus  and  such-like; 
it  sacrifices  intellect  to  character;  its  backbone,  that  is 
to  say, — especially  in  the  visceral  region — is  bigger 
than  its  craniumL  It's  no  accident  that  things  are  so. 
We've  worked  for  backbone.  We  brag  about  backbone, 
and  if  the  joints  are  anchylosed  so  much  the  better. 
We're  still  but  only  half  awake  to  our  error.  You 
can't  change  that  suddenly." 

"  Turn  it  round  and  make  it  go  backwards,"  inter- 
jected Thorns. 

"  It's  trying  to  do  that,"  I  said,  "  in  places." 
And  afterwards  Crupp  declared  I  had  begotten  a 
nightmare  which  haunted  him  of  nights;  he  was  trying 
desperately  and  belatedly  to  blow  a  brain  as  one  blows 
soap-bubbles  on  such  a  mezoroic  saurian  as  I  had  con- 
jured up,  while  the  clumsy  monster's  fate,  all  teeth 
and  brains,  crept  nearer  and  nearer.  .  .  . 


330        THE  NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

I've  grown,  I  think,  since  those  days  out  of  the 
urgency  of  that  apprehension.  I  still  think  a  European 
war,  and  conceivably  a  very  humiliating  war  for  Eng- 
land, may  occur  at  no  very  distant  date,  but  I  do  not 
think  there  is  any  such  heroic  quality  in  our  governing 
class  as  will  make  that  war  catastrophic.  The  prevail- 
ing spirit  in  English  life — it  is  one  of  the  essential 
secrets  of  our  imperial  endurance — is  one  of  underbred 
aggression  in  prosperity  and  diplomatic  compromise  in 
moments  of  danger;  we  bully  haughtily  where  we  can 
and  assimilate  where  we  must.  It  is  not  for  nothing 
that  our  upper  and  middle-class  youth  is  educated  by 
teachers  of  the  highest  character,  scholars  and  gentle- 
men, men  who  can  pretend  quite  honestly  that  Darwin- 
ism hasn't  upset  the  historical  fall  of  man,  that  cricket 
is  moral  training,  and  that  Socialism  is  an  outrage  upon 
the  teachings  of  Christ.  A  sort  of  dignified  dexterity 
of  evasion  is  the  national  reward.  Germany,  with  a 
larger  population,  a  vigorous  and  irreconcilable  pro- 
letariat, a  bolder  intellectual  training,  a  harsher  spirit, 
can  scarcely  fail  to  drive  us  at  last  to  a  realisation  of 
intolerable  strain.  So  we  may  never  fight  at  all.  The 
war  of  preparations  that  has  been  going  on  for  thirty 
years  may  end  like  a  sham-fight  at  last  in  an  umpire's 
decision.  We  shall  proudly  but  very  firmly  take  the 
second  place.  For  my  own  part,  since  I  love  England 
.as  much  as  I  detest  her  present  lethargy  of  soul,  I  pray 
jfor  a  chastening  war — I  wouldn't  mind  her  flag  in  the 
Mirt  if  only  her  spirit  would  come  out  of  it.  So  I  was 
able  to  shake  off  that  earlier  fear  of  some  final  and 
irrevocable  destruction  truncating  all  my  schemes.  At 
the  most,  a  European  war  would  be  a  dramatic  episode 
in  the  reconstruction  I  had  in  view. 

In  India,  too,  I  no  longer  foresee,  as  once  I  was  in- 
clined to  see,  disaster.  The  English  rule  in  India  is 
surely  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  accidents  that 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       331 

has  ever  happened  in  history.  We  are  there  like  a 
man  who  has  fallen  off  a  ladder  on  to  the  neck  of  an 
elephant,  and  doesn't  know  what  to  do  or  how  to  get 
down.  Until  something  happens  he  remains.  Our 
functions  in  India  are  absurd.  We  English  do  not 
own  that  country,  do  not  even  rule  it.  We  make  noth- 
ing happen;  at  the  most  we  prevent  things  happening. 
We  suppress  our  own  literature  there.  Most  English 
people  cannot  even  go  to  this  land  they  possess;  the 
authorities  would  prevent  it.  If  Messrs.  Perowne  or 
Cook  organised  a  cheap  tour  of  Manchester  operatives, 
it  would  be  stopped.  No  one  dare  bring  the  average 
English  voter  face  to  face  with  the  reality  of  India, 
or  let  the  Indian  native  have  a  glimpse  of  the  English 
voter.  In  my  time  I  have  talked  to  English  statesmen, 
Indian  officials  and  ex-officials,  viceroys,  soldiers,  every 
one  who  might  be  supposed  to  know  what  India  signi- 
fies, and  I  have  prayed  them  to  tell  me  what  they 
thought  we  were  up  to  there.  I  am  not  writing  with- 
out my  book  in  these  matters.  And  beyond  a  phrase 
or  so  about  "  even-handed  justice  " — and  look  at  our 
sedition  trials ! — they  told  me  nothing.  Time  after 
time  I  have  heard  of  that  apochryphal  native  ruler  in 
the  north-west,  who,  when  asked  what  would  happen 
if  we  left  India,  replied  that  in  a  week  his  men  would 
be  in  the  saddle,  and  in  six  months  not  a  rupee  nor  a 
virgin  would  be  left  in  Lower  Bengal.  That  is  always 
given  as  our  conclusive  justification.  But  is  it  our  bus- 
iness to  preserve  the  rupees  and  virgins  of  Lower  Ben- 
gal in  a  sort  of  magic  inconclusiveness  ?  Better  plunder 
than  paralysis,  better  fire  and  sword  than  futility.  Our 
flag  is  spread  over  the  peninsula,  without  plans,  without 
intentions — a  vast  preventive.  The  sum  total  of  our 
policy  is  to  arrest  any  discussion,  any  conferences  that 
would  enable  the  Indians  to  work  out  a  tolerable  scheme 
of  the  future  for  themselves.  But  that  does  not  arrest 


332      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

the  resentment  of  men  held  back  from  life.  Consider 
•what  it  must  be  for  the  educated  Indian  sitting  at  the 
feast  of  contemporary  possibilities  with  his  mouth 
gagged  and  his  hands  bound  behind  him!  The  spirit 
of  insurrection  breaks  out  in  spite  of  espionage  and 
seizures.  Our  conflict  for  inaction  develops  stupendous 
absurdities.  The  other  day  the  British  Empire  was 
taking  off  and  examining  printed  cotton  stomach  wraps 
for  seditious  emblems  and  inscriptions.  .  .  . 

In  some  manner  we  shall  have  to  come  out  of  India. 
We  have  had  our  chance,  and  we  have  demonstrated 
nothing  but  the  appalling  dulness  of  our  national  imag- 
ination. We  are  not  good  enough  to  do  anything  with 
India.  Codger  and  Flack,  and  Gates  and  Dayton, 
Cladingbowl  in  the  club,  and  the  Home  Churchman  in 
the  home,  cant  about  "  character,"  worship  of  strenuous 
force  and  contempt  of  truth;  for  the  sake  of  such  men 
and  things  as  these,  we  must  abandon  in  fact,  if  not  in 
appearance,  that  empty  domination.  Had  we  great 
schools  and  a  powerful  teaching,  could  we  boast  great 
men,  had  we  the  spirit  of  truth  and  creation  in  our 
lives,  then  indeed  it  might  be  different.  But  a  race 
that  bears  a  sceptre  must  carry  gifts  to  justify  it. 

It  does  not  follow  that  we  shall  be  driven  castastro- 
phically  from  India.  That  was  my  earlier  mistake. 
We  are  not  proud  enough  in  our  bones  to  be  ruined 
by  India  as  Spain  was  by  her  empire.  We  may  be  able 
to  abandon  India  with  an  air  of  still  remaining  there, 
It  is  our  new  method.  We  train  our  future  rulers  in 
the  public  schools  to  have  a  very  wholesome  respect 
for  strength,  and  as  soon  as  a  power  arises  in  India  m 
spite  of  us,  be  it  a  man  or  a  culture,  or  a  native  state, 
we  shall  be  willing  to  deal  with  it.  We  may  or  may 
not  have  a  war,  but  our  governing  class  will  be  quick 
to  learn  when  we  are  beaten.  Then  they  will  repent 
our  South  African  diplomacy,  and  arrange  for 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       333 

settlement  that  will  abandon  the  reality,  such  as  it  is, 
and  preserve  the  semblance  of  power.  The  conqueror 
de  facto  will  become  the  new  "  loyal  Briton/'  and  the 
democracy  at  home  will  be  invited  to  celebrate  our  re- 
cession— triumphantly.  I  am  no  believer  in  the  im- 
minent dissolution  of  our  Empire;  I  am  less  and  less 
inclined  to  see  in  either  India  or  Germany  the  prob- 
ability of  an  abrupt  truncation  of  those  slow  intellect- 
ual and  moral  constructions  which  are  the  essentials  of 
statecraft. 


§  6 

I  sit  writing  in  this  little  loggia  to  the  sound  of 
dripping  water — this  morning  we  had  rain,  and  the 
roof  of  our  little  casa  is  still  not  dry,  there  are  pools 
in  the  rocks  under  the  sweet  chestnuts,  and  the  torrent 
that  crosses  the  salita  is  full  and  boastful, — and  I  try 
to  recall  the  order  of  my  impressions  during  that 
watching,  dubious  time,  before  I  went  over  to  the  Con- 
servative Party.  I  was  trying — chaotic  task! — to 
gauge  the  possibilities  inherent  in  the  quality  of  the 
British  aristocracy.  There  comes  a  broad  spectacular 
effect  of  wide  parks,  diversified  by  woods  and  bracken 
valleys,  and  dappled  with  deer;  of  great  smooth  lawns 
shaded  by  ancient  trees;  of  big  fa9ades  of  sunlit  build- 
ings dominating  the  country  side;  of  large  fine  rooms 
full  of  handsome,  easy-mannered  people.  As  a  sort  of 
representative  picture  to  set  off  against  those  other  pic- 
tures of  Liberals  and  of  Socialists  I  have  given,  I  re- 
call one  of  those  huge  assemblies  the  Duchess  of  Clyiies 
inaugurated  at  Stamford  House.  The  place  itself  is 
one  of  the  vastest  private  houses  in  London,  a  huge 
clustering  mass  of  white  and  gold  saloons  with  polished 
floors  and  wonderful  pictures,  and  staircases  and  gal- 
leries on  a  Gargantuan  scale.  And  there  she  sought 


884      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

to  gather  all  that  was  most  representative  of  English 
activities,  and  did,  in  fact,  in  those  brilliant  nocturnal 
crowds,  get  samples  of  nearly  every  section  of  our 
social  and  intellectual  life,  with  a  marked  predominance 
upon  the  political  and  social  side. 

I  remember  sitting  in  one  of  the  recesses  at  the  end 
of  the  big  saloon  with  Mrs.  Redmondson,  one  of  those 
sharp-minded,  beautiful  rich  women  one  meets  so  often 
in  London,  who  seem  to  have  done  nothing  and  to  be 
capable  of  everything,  and  we  watched  the  crowd — 
uniforms  and  splendours  were  streaming  in  from  a 
State  ball — and  exchanged  information.  I  told  her 
about  the  politicians  and  intellectuals,  and  she  told  me 
about  the  aristocrats,  and  we  sharpened  our  wit  on 
them  and  counted  the  percentage  of  beautiful  people 
among  the  latter,  and  wondered  if  the  general  effect 
of  tallness  was  or  was  not  an  illusion. 

They  were,  we  agreed,  for  the  most  part  bigger 
than  the  average  of  people  in  London,  and  a  handsome 
lot,  even  when  they  were  not  subtly  individualised. 
"  They  look  so  well  nurtured,"  I  said,  "  well  cared  for. 
I  like  their  quiet,  well-trained  movements,  their  pleas- 
ant consideration  for  each  other.'* 

"  Kindly,  good  tempered,  and  at  bottom  utterly  self- 
ish," she  said,  "like  big,  rather  carefully  trained, 
rather  pampered  children.  What  else  can  you  expect 
from  them  ?  " 

"  They  are  good  tempered,  anyhow,"  I  witnessed, 
"  and  that's  an  achievement.  I  don't  think  I  could 
ever  be  content  under  a  bad-tempered,  sentimentalis- 
ing, strenuous  Government.  That's  why  I  couldn't 
stand  the  Roosevelt  regime  in  America.  One's  chief 
surprise  when  one  comes  across  these  big  people  for 
the  first  time  is  their  admirable  easiness  and  a  real 
personal  modesty.  I  confess  I  admire  them.  Oh!  I 
like  them.  I  wouldn't  at  all  mind,  I  believe,  giving 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       335 

over  the  country  to  this  aristocracy — given  some- 
thing  " 

"Which  they  haven't  got." 

"Which  they  haven't  got — or  they'd  be  the  finest 
sort  of  people  in  the  world." 

"That  something?"  she  inquired. 

"  I  don't  know.  I've  been  puzzling  my  wits  to  know. 
They've  done  all  sorts  of  things " 

"  That's  Lord  Wrassleton,"  she  interrupted,  "  whose 
leg  was  broken — you  remember? — at  Spion  Kop." 

"  It's  healed  very  well.  I  like  the  gold  lace  and 
the  white  glove  resting,  with  quite  a  nice  awkwardness, 
on  the  sword.  When  I  was  a  little  boy  I  wanted  to 
wear  clothes  like  that.  And  the  stars !  He's  got  the 
V.  C.  Most  of  these  people  here  have  at  any  rate 
hown  pluck,  you  know — brought  something  off." 

"  Not  quite  enough,"  she  suggested. 

"  I  think  that's  it,"  I  said.  "  Not  quite  enough — not 
quite  hard  enough,"  I  added. 

She  laughed  and  looked  at  me.  "  You'd  like  to 
make  us,"  she  said. 

"What?" 

"  Hard." 

"  I  don't  think  you'll  go  on  if  you  don't  get  hard." 

"We  shan't  be  so  pleasant  if  we  do." 

"  Well,  there  my  puzzled  wits  come  in  again.  I 
don't  see  why  an  aristocracy  shouldn't  be  rather  hard 
drained,  and  yet  kindly.  I'm  not  convinced  that  the 
resources  of  education  are  exhausted.  I  want  to  better 
this,  because  it  already  looks  so  good." 

"How  are  we  to  do  it?"  asked  Mrs.  Redmondson. 

"  Oh,  there  you  have  me !  I've  been  spending  my 
time  lately  in  trying  to  answer  that!  It  makes  me 
quarrel  with " — I  held  up  my  fingers  and  ticked  the 
items  off — "the  public  schools,  the  private  tutors,  the 
army  exams.,  the  Universities,  the  Church,  the  general 


336      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

attitude    of   the    country    towards    science    and    litera- 
ture  " 

"We  all  do/'  said  Mrs.  Redmondson.  "We  can't 
begin  again  at  the  beginning,"  she  added. 

"  Couldn't  one/'  I  nodded  at  the  assembly  in  general, 
"  start  a  movement?  " 

"  There's  the  Confederates/'  she  said,  with  a  faint 
smile  that  masked  a  gleam  of  curiosity.  ...  "  You 
want,"  she  said,  "  to  say  to  the  aristocracy,  '  Be  aris- 
tocrats. Noblesse  oblige.9  Do  you  remember  what 
happened  to  the  monarch  who  was  told  to  'Be  a 
King'?" 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  I  want  an  aristocracy." 

"  This,"  she  said,  smiling,  "  is  the  pick  of  them. 
The  backwoodsmen  are  off  the  stage.  These  are  the 
brilliant  ones — the  smart  and  the  blues.  .  .  .  They 
cost  a  lot  of  money,  you  know." 

So  far  Mrs.  Redmondson,  but  the  picture  remained 
full  of  things  not  stated  in  our  speech.  They  were  on 
the  whole  handsome  people,  charitable  minded,  happy, 
and  easy.  They  led  spacious  lives,  and  there  was 
something  free  and  fearless  about  their  bearing  that 
I  liked  extremely.  The  women  particularly  were  wide- 
reading,  fine-thinking.  Mrs.  Redmondson  talked  as 
fully  and  widely  and  boldly  as  a  man,  and  with  those 
flashes  of  intuition,  those  startling,  sudden  delicacies  of 
perception  few  men  display.  I  liked,  too,  the  relations 
that  held  between  women  and  men,  their  general  tol- 
erance, their  antagonism  to  the  harsh  jealousies  that 
are  the  essence  of  the  middle-class  order.  .  .  . 

After  all,  if  one's  aim  resolved  itself  into  the  devel- 
opment of  a  type  and  culture  of  men,  whv  shouldn't 
one  begin  at  this  end  ? 

It  is  very  easy  indeed  to  generalise  about  a  class  of 
human  beings,  but  much  harder  to  produce  a  sample. 
Was  old  Lady  Forthundred,  for  instance,  fairly  a  sam- 


SEEKING  ASSOCIATES       337 

pie?  I  remember  her  as  a  smiling,  magnificent  pres- 
ence, a  towering  accumulation  of  figure  and  wonder- 
ful shimmering  blue  silk  and  black  lace  and  black  hair, 
and  small  fine  features  and  chins  and  chins  and  chins, 
disposed  in  a  big  cane  chair  with  wraps  and  cushions 
upon  the  great  terrace  of  Champneys.  Her  eye  was 
blue  and  hard,  and  her  accent  and  intonation  were 
exactly  what  you  would  expect  from  a  rather  common- 
place dressmaker  pretending  to  be  aristocratic.  I  was, 
I  am  afraid,  posing  a  little  as  the  intelligent  but  re- 
spectful inquirer  from  below  investigating  the  great 
world,  and  she  was  certainly  posing  as  my  informant. 
She  affected  a  cynical  coarseness.  She  developed  a 
theory  on  the  governance  of  England,  beautifully  frank 
and  simple.  "  Give  'urn  all  a  peerage  when  they  get 
twenty  thousand  a  year/'  she  maintained.  "  That's  my 
remedy." 

In  my  new  role  of  theoretical  aristocrat  I  felt  a  lit- 
tle abashed. 

"  Twenty  thousand,"  she  repeated  with  conviction. 

It  occurred  to  me  that  I  was  in  the  presence  of  the 
aristocratic  theory  currently  working  as  distinguished 
from  my  as  yet  unformulated  intentions. 

"  You'll  get  a  lot  of  loafers  and  scamps  among  *um," 
said  Lady  Forthundred.  "  You  get  loafers  and  scamps 
everywhere,  but  you'll  get  a  lot  of  men  who'll  work 
hard  to  keep  things  together,  and  that's  what  we're  all 
after,  isn't  ut?  " 

"  It's  not  an  ideal  arrangement." 

"  Tell  me  anything  better,"  said  Lady  Forthundred. 

On  the  whole,  and  because  she  refused  emphatically 
to  believe  in  education,  Lady  Forthundred  scored. 

We  had  been  discussing  Cossington's  recent  peerage, 
for  Cossington,  my  old  schoolfellow  at  City  Merchants', 
and  my  victor  in  the  affair  of  the  magazine,  had 
clambered  to  an  amazing  wealth  up  a  piled  heap  of 


338       THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

energetically  pushed  penny  and  halfpenny  magazines, 
and  a  group  of  daily  newspapers.  I  had  expected  to 
find  the  great  lady  hostile  to  the  new-comer,  but  she 
accepted  him,  she  gloried  in  him. 

"  We're  a  peerage/'  she  said,  "  but  none  of  us  have 
ever  had  any  nonsense  about  nobility." 

She  turned  and  smiled  down  on  me.  "  We  English/' 
she  said,  "  are  a  practical  people.  We  assimilate  'urn." 

"  Then,  I  suppose,  they  don't  give  trouble  ?  " 

"  Then  they  don't  give  trouble." 

"They  learn  to  shoot?" 

"And  all  that,"  said  Lady  Forthundred.  "  Yesw 
And  things  go  on.  Sometimes  better  than  others,  but 
they  go  on — somehow.  It  depends  very  much  on  the 
sort  of  butler  who  pokes  'um  about." 

I  suggested  that  it  might  be  possible  to  get  a  secure 
twenty  thousand  a  year  by  at  least  detrimental  meth- 
ods— socially  speaking. 

"We  must  take  the  bad  and  the  good  of  'um/'  said 
Lady  Forthundred,  courageously.  .  .  . 

Now,  was  she  a  sample?  It  happened  she  talked. 
iWhat  was  there  in  the  brains  of  the  multitude  of  her 
first,  second,  third,  fourth,  and  fifth  cousins,  who  didn't 
talk,  who  shone  tall,  and  bearing  themselves  finely, 
against  a  background  of  deft,  attentive  maids  and 
valets,  on  every  spacious  social  scene?  How  did  things 
look  to  them? 

§7 

Side  by  side  with  Lady  Forthundred,  it  is  curious 
to  put  Evesham  with  his  tall,  bent  body,  his  little- 
featured  almost  elvish  face,  his  unequal  mild  brown 
eyes,  his  gentle  manner,  his  sweet,  amazing  oratory. 
He  led  all  these  people  wonderfully.  He  was  always 
curious  and  interested  about  life,  wary  beneath  a  pleas- 
ing frankness — and  I  tormented  my  brain  to  get  to 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       339 

the  bottom  of  him.  For  a  long  time  he  was  the  most 
powerful  man  in  England  under  the  throne;  he  had 
the  Lords  in  his  hand,  and  a  great  majority  in  the 
Commons,  and  the  discontents  and  intrigues  that  are 
the  concomitants  of  an  overwhelming  party  advantage 
broke  against  him  as  waves  break  against  a  cliff.  He 
foresaw  so  far  in  these  matters  that  it  seemed  he 
scarcely  troubled  to  foresee.  He  brought  political  art 
to  the  last  triumph  of  naturalness.  Always  for  me 
[he  has  been  the  typical  aristocrat,  so  typical  and  above 
the  mere  forms  of  aristocracy,  that  he  remained  a  com- 
moner to  the  end  of  his  days. 

I  had  met  him  at  the  beginning  of  my  career;  he 
read  some  early  papers  of  mine,  and  asked  to  see  me, 
and  I  conceived  a  flattered  liking  for  him  that  strength- 
ened to  a  very  strong  feeling  indeed.  He  seemed  to  me 
to  stand  alone  without  an  equal,  the  greatest  man  in 
British  political  life.  Some  men  one  sees  through  and 
understands,  some  one  cannot  see  into  or  round  because 
they  are  of  opaque  clay,  but  about  Evesham  I  had  a 
sense  of  things  hidden  as  it  were  by  depth  and  mists, 
because  he  was  so  big  and  atmospheric  a  personality. 
No  other  contemporary  has  had  that  effect  upon  me. 
I've  sat  beside  him  at  dinners,  stayed  in  houses  with 
him — he  was  in  the  big  house  party  at  Champneys — 
talked  to  him,  sounded  him,  watching  him  as  I  sat 
beside  him.  I  could  talk  to  him  with  extraordinary 
freedom  and  a  rare  sense  of  being  understood.  Other 
men  have  to  be  treated  in  a  special  manner;  approached 
through  their  own  mental  dialect,  flattered  by  a  minute 
regard  for  what  they  have  said  and  done.  Evesham 
was  as  widely  and  charitably  receptive  as  any  man  I 
have  ever  met.  The  common  politicians  beside  him 
seemed  like  rows  of  stuffy  little  rooms  looking  out  upon 
the  sea. 

And  what  was  he   up  to?     What  did   he  think  we 


340      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

were  doing  with  Mankind?  That  I  thought  worth 
knowing. 

I  remember  his  talking  on  one  occasion  at  the  Hart- 
steins',  at  a  dinner  so  tremendously  floriferous  and 
equipped  that  we  were  almost  forced  into  duologues, 
about  the  Dossible  common  constructive  purpose  in  pol- 
itics. 

"  I  feel  so  much,"  he  said,  "  that  the  best  people  in 
every  party  converge.  We  don't  differ  at  Westminster 
as  they  do  in  the  country  towns.  There's  a  sort  of 
extending  common  policy  that  goes  on .  under  every 
government,  because  on  the  whole  it's  the  right  thing 
to  do,  and  people  know  it.  Things  that  used  to  be 
matters  of  opinion  become  matters  of  science — and 
cease  to  be  party  questions." 

He  instanced  education. 

"  Apart,"   said   I,   "  from  the  religious    question." 

"  Apart  from  the  religious  question." 

He  dropped  that  aspect  with  an  easy  grace,  and 
went  on  with  his  general  theme  that  political  conflict 
was  the  outcome  of  uncertainty.  "  Directly  you  get  a 
thing  established,  so  that  people  can  say,  '  Now  this  is 
Right/  with  the  same  conviction  that  people  can  say 
water  is  a  combination  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen,  there's 
no  more  to  be  said.  The  thing  has  to  be  done.  .  .  ." 

And  to  put  against  this  effect  of  Evesham,  broad 
and  humanely  tolerant,  posing  as  the  minister  of  a 
steadily  developing  constructive  conviction,  there  are 
other  memories. 

Have  I  not  seen  him  in  the  House,  persistent,  per- 
suasive, indefatigable,  and  by  all  my  standards  wick- 
edly perverse,  leaning  over  the  table  with  those  in- 
sistent movements  of  his  hand  upon  it,  or  swaying  for- 
ward with  a  grip  upon  his  coat  lapel,  fighting  with  a 
diabolical  skill  to  preserve  what  are  in  effect  religious 
tests,  tests  he  must  have  known  would  outrage  and 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       341 

humiliate  and  injure  the  consciences  of  a  quarter — and 
that  perhaps  the  best  quarter — of  the  youngsters  who 
come  to  the  work  of  elementary  education? 

In  playing  for  points  in  the  game  of  party  advan- 
tage Evesham  displayed  at  times  a  quite  wicked  un- 
scrupulousness  in  the  use  of  his  subtle  mind.  I  would 
sit  on  the  Liberal  benches  and  watch  him,  and  listen 
to  his  urbane  voice,  fascinated  by  him.  Did  he  really 
care?  Did  anything  matter  to  him?  And  if  it  really 
mattered  nothing,  why  did  he  trouble  to  serve  the  nar- 
rowness and  passion  of  his  side?  Or  did  he  see  far 
beyond  my  scope,  so  that  this  petty  iniquity  was  justi- 
fied by  greater,  remoter  ends  of  which  I  had  no  inti- 
mation ? 

They  accused  him  of  nepotism.  His  friends  and 
family  were  certainly  well  cared  for.  In  private  life 
he  was  full  of  an  affectionate  intimacy;  he  pleased  by 
being  charmed  and  pleased.  One  might  think  at  times 
there  was  no  more  of  him  than  a  clever  man  happily 
circumstanced,  and  finding  an  interest  and  occupation 
in  politics.  And  then  came  a  glimpse  of  thought,  of 
imagination,  like  the  sight  of  a  soaring  eagle  through 
a  staircase  skylight.  Oh,  beyond  question  he  was 
great!  No  other  contemporary  politician  had  his  qual- 
ity. In  no  man  have  I  perceived  so  sympathetically 
the  great  contrast  between  warm,  personal  things  and 
the  white  dream  of  statecraft.  Except  that  he  had  it 
seemed  no  hot  passions,  but  only  interests  and  fine 
affections  and  indolences,  he  paralleled  the  conflict  of 
my  life.  He  saw  and  thought  widely  and  deeply;  but 
at  times  it  seemed  to  me  his  greatness  stood  over  and 
behind  the  reality  of  his  life,  like  some  splendid  ser- 
vant, thinking  his  own  thoughts,  who  waits  behind  a 
lesser  master's  chair.  .  .  . 

§  8 
Of  course,  when  Evesham  talked  of  this  ideal  of  tha 


342      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

organised  state  becoming  so  finely  true  to  practicability 
and  so  clearly  stated  as  to  have  the  compelling  convic- 
tion of  physical  science,  he  spoke  quite  after  my  heart. 
Had  he  really  embodied  the  attempt  to  realise  that,  I 
could  have  done  no  more  than  follow  him  blindly.  But 
neither  he  nor  I  embodied  that,  and  there  lies  the  gist 
of  my  story.  And  when  it  came  to  a  study  of  others 
among  the  leading  Tories  and  Imperialists  the  doubt 
increased,  until  with  some  at  last  it  was  possible  to 
question  whether  they  had  any  imaginative  conception 
of  constructive  statecraft  at  all;  whether  they  didn't 
opaquely  accept  the  world  for  what  it  was,  and  set 
themselves  single-mindedly  to  make  a  place  for  them- 
selves and  cut  a  figure  in  it. 

There  were  some  very  fine  personalities  among  them: 
there  were  the  great  peers  who  had  administered  Egypt, 
India,  South  Africa,  Framboya — Cromer,  Kitchener, 
Curzon,  Milner,  Gane,  for  example.  So  far  as  that 
easier  task  of  holding  sword  and  scales  had  gone,  they 
had  shown  the  finest  qualities,  but  they  had  returned 
to  the  perplexing  and  exacting  problem  of  the  home 
country,  a  little  glorious,  a  little  too  simply  bold. 
They  wanted  to  arm  and  they  wanted  to  educate, 
but  the  habit  of  immediate  necessity  made  them  far 
more  eager  to  arm  than  to  educate,  and  their  experi- 
ence of  heterogeneous  controls  made  them  overrate  the 
need  for  obedience  in  a  homogeneous  country.  They 
didn't  understand  raw  men,  ill-trained  men,  uncertain 
minds,  and  intelligent  women;  and  these  are  the  things 
that  matter  in  England.  .  .  .  There  were  also  the 
great  business  adventurers,  from  Cranber  to  Cossington 
(who  was  now  Lord  Paddockhurst).  My  mind  re- 
mained unsettled,  and  went  up  and  down  the  scale 
between  a  belief  in  their  far-sighted  purpose  and  the 
perception  of  crude  vanities,  coarse  ambitions,  vulgar 
competitiveness,  and  a  mere  habitual  persistence  in 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       343 

the  pursuit  of  gain.  For  a  time  I  saw  a  good  deal  of 
Cossington — I  wish  I  had  kept  a  diary  of  his  talk 
and  gestures,  to  mark  how  he  could  vary  from  day  to 
day  between  a  poseur,  a  smart  tradesman,  and  a  very 
bold  and  wide-thinking  political  schemer.  He  had  a 
vanity  of  sweeping  actions,  motor  car  pounces,  Napo- 
leonic rushes,  that  led  to  violent  ineffectual  changes  in 
the  policy  of  his  papers,  and  a  haunting  pursuit  by  par- 
allel columns  in  the  liberal  press  that  never  abashed 
him  in  the  slightest  degree.  By  an  accident  I  plumbed 
the  folly  in  him — but  I  feel  I  never  plumbed  his  wis- 
dom. I  remember  him  one  day  after  a  lunch  at  the 
Barhams'  saying  suddenly,  out  of  profound  medita- 
tion over  the  end  of  a  cigar,  one  of  those  sentences  that 
seem  to  light  the  whole  interior  being  of  a  man. 
"  Some  day,"  he  said  softly,  rather  to  himself  than  to 

me,  and  a  propos  of  nothing "  some  day  I  will  raise 

the  country." 

"Why  not?  "  I  said,  after  a  pause,  and  leant  across 
him  for  the  little  silver  spirit-lamp,  to  light  my 
cigarette.  .  .  . 

Then  the  Tories  had  for  another  section  the  ancient 
creations,  and  again  there  were  the  financial  peers, 
men  accustomed  to  reserve,  and  their  big  lawyers, 
accustomed  to — well,  qualified  statement.  And  below 
the  giant  personalities  of  the  party  were  the  young 
bloods,  young,  adventurous  men  of  the  type  of  Lord 
Tarvrille,  who  had  seen  service  in  South  Africa,  who 
had  travelled  and  hunted;  explorers,  keen  motorists, 
interested  in  aviation,  active  in  army  organisation. 
Good,  brown-faced  stuff  they  were,  but  impervious  to 
ideas  outside  the  range  of  their  activities,  more  ignorant 
of  science  than  their  chaffeurs,  and  of  the  quality  of 
English  people  than  welt-politicians;  contemptuous  of 
school  and  university  by  reason  of  the  Gateses  and 
Flacks  and  Codgers  who  had  come  their  way,  witty, 


344      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

light-hearted,  patriotic  at  the  Kipling  level,  with  a 
certain  aptitude  for  bullying.  They  varied  in  insensible 
gradations  between  the  noble  sportsmen  on  the  one 
hand,  and  men  like  Gane  and  the  Tories  of  our  Pen- 
tagram club  on  the  other.  You  perceive  how  a  man 
might  exercise  his  mind  in  the  attempt  to  strike  an 
average  of  public  serviceability  in  this  miscellany! 
And  mixed  up  with  these,  mixed  up  sometimes  in  the 
same  man,  was  the  pure  reactionary,  whose  predomi- 
nant idea  was  that  the  village  schools  should  confine 
themselves  to  teaching  the  catechism,  hat-touching  and 
courtesying,  and  be  given  a  holiday  whenever  beaters 
were  in  request.  .  .  . 

I  find  now  in  my  mind  as  a  sort  of  counterpoise  to 
Evesham  the  figure  of  old  Lord  Wardingham,  asleep  in 
the  largest  armchair  in  the  library  of  Stamford  Court 
after  lunch.  One  foot  rested  on  one  of  those  things — 
I  think  they  are  called  gout  stools.  He  had  been 
playing  golf  all  the  morning  and  wearied  a  weak  in- 
step; at  lunch  he  had  sat  at  my  table  and  talked  in 
the  overbearing  manner  permitted  to  irascible  impor- 
tant men  whose  insteps  are  painful.  Among  other 
things  he  had  flouted  the  idea  that  women  would  ever 
understand  statecraft  or  be  more  than  a  nuisance  in 
politics,  denied  flatly  that  Hindoos  were  capable  of 
anything  whatever  except  excesses  in  population, 
regretted  he  could  not  censor  picture  galleries  and  cir- 
culating libraries,  and  declared  that  dissenters  were 
people  who  pretended  to  take  theology  seriously  with 
the  express  purpose  of  upsetting  the  entirely  satisfactory 
compromise  of  the  Established  Church.  "  No  sensible 
people,  with  anything  to  gain  or  lose,  argue  about 
religion,"  he  said.  "  They  mean  mischief."  Having 
delivered  his  soul  upon  these  points,  and  silenced  the 
little  conversation  to  the  left  of  him  from  which  they 
had  arisen,  he  became,  after  an  appreciative  encounter 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       345 

with  a  sanguinary  woodcock,  more  amiable,  responded 
to  some  respectful  initiatives  of  Crupp's,  and  related  a 
number  of  classical  anecdotes  of  those  blighting  snubs, 
vindictive  retorts  and  scandalous  miscarriages  of  justice 
that  are  so  dear  to  the  forensic  mind.  Now  he  reposed. 
He  was  breathing  heavily  with  his  mouth  a  little  open 
and  his  head  on  one  side.  One  whisker  was  turned 
back  against  the  comfortable  padding.  His  plump 
strong  hands  gripped  the  arms  of  his  chair,  and  his 
frown  was  a  little  assuaged.  How  tremendously  fed  up 
he  looked!  Honours,  wealth,  influence,  respect,  he  had 
them  all.  How  scornful  and  hard  it  had  made  his 
unguarded  expression! 

I  note  without  comment  that  it  didn't  even  occur 
to  me  then  to  wake  him  up  and  ask  him  what  he  was 
up  to  with  mankind. 

§  9 

One  countervailing  influence  to  my  drift  to  Toryism 
in  those  days  was  Margaret's  quite  religious  faith  in  the 
Liberals.  I  realised  that  slowly  and  with  a  mild 
astonishment.  It  set  me,  indeed,  even  then  questioning 
my  own  change  of  opinion.  We  came  at  last  incident- 
ally, as  our  way  was,  to  an  exchange  of  views.  It  was 
as  nearly  a  quarrel  as  we  had  before  I  came  over  to 
the  Conservative  side.  It  was  at  Champneys,  and  I 
think  during  the  same  visit  that  witnessed  my  explora- 
tion of  Lady  Forthundred.  It  arose  indirectly,  I  think, 
out  of  some  comments  of  mine  upon  our  fellow-guests, 
but  it  is  one  of  those  memories  of  which  the  scene  and 
quality  remain  more  vivid  than  the  things  said,  a 
memory  without  any  very  definite  beginning  or  end. 
It  was  afternoon,  in  the  pause  between  tea  and  the 
dressing  bell,  and  we  were  in  Margaret's  big  silver- 
adorned,  chintz-bright  room,  looking  out  on  the  trim 
Italian  garden.  .  .  .  Yes,  the  beginning  of  it  has 


346      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

escaped  me  altogether,  but  I  remember  it  as  an  odd 
exceptional  little  wrangle. 

At  first  we  seem  to  have  split  upon  the  moral 
quality  of  the  aristocracy,  and  I  had  an  odd  sense  that 
in  some  way  too  feminine  for  me  to  understand  our 
hostess  had  aggrieved  her.  She  said,  I  know,  that 
Champneys  distressed  her;  made  her  "  eager  for  work 
and  reality  again." 

"  But  aren't  these  people  real?  " 

"  They're  so  superficial,  so  extravagant!  " 

I  said  I  was  not  shocked  by  their  unreality.  They 
seemed  the  least  affected  people  I  had  ever  met.  "  And 
are  they  really  so  extravagant?  "  I  asked,  and  put  it  to 
her  that  her  dresses  cost  quite  as  much  as  any  other 
woman's  in  the  house. 

"  It's  not  only  their  dresses,"  Margaret  parried. 
"  It's  the  scale  and  spirit  of  things." 

I  questioned  that.  "  They're  cynical,"  said  Marga- 
ret, staring  before  her  out  of  the  window. 

I  challenged  her,  and  she  quoted  the  Brabants, 
about  whom  there  had  been  an  ancient  scandal.  She'd 
heard  of  it  from  Altiora,  and  it  was  also  Altiora  who'd 
given  her  a  horror  of  Lord  Carnaby,  who  was  also  with 
us.  "  You  know  his  reputation,"  said  Margaret. 
"  That  Normandy  girl.  Every  one  knows  about  it.  I 
shiver  when  I  look  at  him.  He  seems — oh!  like  some- 
thing not  of  our  civilisation.  He  will  come  and  say 
little  things  to  me." 

"  Offensive  things  ?  " 

"  No,  politenesses  and  things.  Of  course  his  man- 
ners are — quite  right.  That  only  makes  it  worse,  I  think. 
It  shows  he  might  have  helped — all  that  happened.  I 
do  all  I  can  to  make  him  see  I  don't  like  him.  But 
none  of  the  others  make  the  slightest  objection  to 
him." 

"  Perhaps  these  people  imagine  something  might  be 
said  for  him." 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       347 

"  That's  just  it,"  said  Margaret. 

"  Charity,"  I  suggested. 

"  I  don't  like  that  sort  of  toleration." 

I  was  oddly  annoyed.  "  Like  eating  with  publicans 
and  sinners,"  I  said.  "No!  .  .  ." 

But  scandals,  and  the  contempt  for  rigid  standards 
their  condonation  displayed,  weren't  more  than  the 
sharp  edge  of  the  trouble.  "  It's  their  whole  position, 
their  selfish  predominance,  their  class  conspiracy  against 
the  mass  of  people,"  said  Margaret.  "  When  I  sit  at 
dinner  in  that  splendid  room,  with  its  glitter  and  white 
reflections  and  candlelight,  and  its  flowers  and  its  won- 
derful service  and  its  candelabra  of  solid  gold,  I  seem 
to  feel  the  slums  and  the  mines  and  the  over-crowded 
cottages  stuffed  away  under  the  table." 

I  reminded  Margaret  that  she  was  not  altogether 
innocent  of  unearned  increment. 

"  But  aren't  we  doing  our  best  to  give  it  back  ? " 
she  said. 

I  was  moved  to  question  her.  "  Do  you  really 
think,"  I  asked,  "  that  the  Tories  and  peers  and  rich 
people  are  to  blame  for  social  injustice  as  we  have  it 
to-day?  Do  you  really  see  politics  as  a  struggle  of 
light  on  the  Liberal  side  against  darkness  on  the 
Tory?  " 

"  They  must  know,"  said  Margaret. 

I  found  myself  questioning  that.  I  see  now  that 
to  Margaret  it  must  have  seemed  the  perversest  carp- 
ing against  manifest  things,  but  at  the  time  I  was  con- 
centrated simply  upon  the  elucidation  of  her  view 
and  my  own;  I  wanted  to  get  at  her  conception  in  the 
sharpest,  hardest  lines  that  were  possible.  It  was 
perfectly  clear  that  she  saw  Toryism  as  the  diabolical 
element  in  affairs.  The  thing  showed  in  its  hopeless 
untruth  all  the  clearer  for  the  fine,  clean  emotion  with 
which  she  gave  it  out  to  me.  My  sleeping  peer  in 
the  library  at  Stamford  Court  and  Evesham  talking 


348      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

luminously  behind  the  Hartstein  flowers  embodied  the 
devil,  and  my  replete  citizen  sucking  at  his  cigar  in 
the  National  Liberal  Club,  Willie  Crampton  discussing 
the  care  and  management  of  the  stomach  over  a 
specially  hygienic  lemonade,  and  Dr.  Tumpany  in  his 
aggressive  frock-coat  pegging  out  a  sort  of  copyright 
in  Socialism,  were  the  centre  and  wings  of  the  angelic 
side.  It  was  nonsense.  But  how  was  I  to  put  the 
truth  to  her? 

"  I  don't  see  things  at  all  as  you  do,"  I  said.  "  I 
don't  see  things  in  the  same  way." 

"  Think  of  the  poor,"  said  Margaret,  going  off  at  a 
tangent. 

"  Think  of  every  one,"  I  said.  "  We  Liberals  have 
done  more  mischief  through  well-intentioned  benevo- 
lence than  all  the  selfishness  in  the  world  could  have 
done.  We  built  up  the  liquor  interest." 

"  We!  "  cried  Margaret.  "How  can  you  say  that? 
It's  against  us." 

"  Naturally.  But  we  made  it  a  monopoly  in  our 
clumsy  efforts  to  prevent  people  drinking  what  they 
liked,  because  it  interfered  with  industrial  regu- 
larity  " 

"Oh!"  cried  Margaret,  stung;  and  I  could  see  she 
thought  I  was  talking  mere  wickedness. 

"  That's  it,"  I  said. 

"  But  would  you  have  peoule  drink  whatever  they 
pleased  ?  " 

"  Certainly.  What  right  have  I  to  dictate  to  other 
men  and  women  ?  " 

"  But  think  of  the  children !  " 

"  Ah !  there  you  have  the  folly  of  modern  Liberalism, 
its  half-cunning,  half -silly  way  of  getting  at  everything 
in  a  roundabout  fashion.  If  neglecting  children  is  an 
offence,  and  it  is  an  offence,  then  deal  with  it  as  such, 
but  don't  go  badgering  and  restricting  people  who  sell 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       349 

something  that  may  possibly  in  some  cases  lead  to  a 
neglect  of  children.  If  drunkenness  is  an  offence, 
punish  it,  but  don't  punish  a  man  for  selling  honest 
drink  that  perhaps  after  all  won't  make  any  one  drunk 
at  all.  Don't  intensify  the  viciousness  of  the  public- 
house  by  assuming  the  place  isn't  fit  for  women  and 
children.  That's  either  spite  or  folly  Make  the 
public-house  fit  for  women  and  children.  Make  it  a 
real  public-house.  If  we  Liberals  go  on  as  we  are 
going,  we  shall  presently  want  to  stop  the  sale  of  ink 
and  paper  because  those  things  tempt  men  to  forgery. 
We  do  already  threaten  the  privacy  of  the  post  because 
of  betting  tout's  letters.  The  drift  of  all  that  kind 
of  thing  is  narrow,  unimaginative,  mischievous, 
stupid.  .  .  ." 

I  stopped  short  and  walked  to  the  window  and  sur- 
veyed a  pretty  fountain,  facsimile  of  one  in  Verona, 
amidst  trim-cut  borderings  of  yew.  Beyond,  and  seen 
between  the  stems  of  ilex  trees,  was  a  great  blaze  of 
yellow  flowers.  .  .  . 

"  But  prevention,"  I  heard  Margaret  behind  me,  "  is 
the  essence  of  our  work." 

I  turned.  "  There's  no  prevention  but  education. 
There's  no  antiseptics  in  life  but  love  and  fine  think- 
ing. Make  people  fine,  make  fine  people.  Don't  be 
afraid.  These  Tory  leaders  are  better  people  indi- 
vidually than  the  average;  why  cast  them  for  the 
villains  of  the  piece?  The  real  villain  in  the  piece — 
in  the  whole  human  drama — is  the  muddle-headedness, 
and  it  matters  very  little  if  it's  virtuous-minded  or 
wicked.  I  want  to  get  at  muddle-headedness.  If  I 
could  do  that  I  could  let  all  that  you  call  wickedness 
in  the  world  run  about  and  do  what  it  jolly  well  pleased. 
It  would  matter  about  as  much  as  a  slightly  neglected 
dog — in  an  otherwise  well-managed  home." 

My  thoughts  had  run  away  with  me. 


350      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

"  I  can't  understand  you,"  said  Margaret,  in  the  pro- 
f  oundest  distress.  "  I  can't  understand  how  it  is  you 
are  coming  to  see  things  like  this." 

§  10 

The  moods  of  a  thinking  man  in  politics  are 
curiously  evasive  and  difficult  to  describe.  Neither 
the  public  nor  the  historian  will  permit  the  statesman 
moods.  He  has  from  the  first  to  assume  he  has  an 
Aim,  a  definite  Aim,  and  to  pretend  to  an  absolute 
consistency  with  that.  Those  subtle  questionings  about 
the  very  fundamentals  of  life  which  plague  us  all  so 
relentlessly  nowadays  are  supposed  to  be  silenced.  He 
lifts  his  chin  and  pursues  his  Aim  explicitly  in  the 
sight  of  all  men.  Those  who  have  no  real  political 
experience  can  scarcely  imagine  the  immense  mental 
and  moral  strain  there  is  between  one's  everyday  acts 
and  utterances  on  the  one  hand  and  the  "  thinking- 
out  "  process  on  the  other.  It  is  perplexingly  difficult 
to  keep  in  your  mind,  fixed  and  firm,  a  scheme  essen- 
tially complex,  to  keep  balancing  a  swaying  possibility 
while  at  the  same  time  under  jealous,  hostile,  and 
stupid  observation  you  tread  your  part  in  the  platitu- 
dinous, quarrelsome,  ill-presented  march  of  affairs.  .  .  . 

The  most  impossible  of  all  autobiographies  is  an 
intellectual  autobiography.  I  have  thrown  together  in 
the  crudest  way  the  elements  of  the  problem  I  struggled 
with,  but  I  can  give  no  record  of  the  subtle  details;  I 
can  tell  nothing  of  the  long  vacillations  between  Protean 
values,  the  talks  and  re-talks,  the  meditations,  the 
bleak  lucidities  of  sleepless  nights.  .  .  . 

And  yet  these  things  I  have  struggled  with  must 
be  thought  out,  and,  to  begin  with,  they  must  be 
thought  out  in  this  muddled,  experimenting  way.  To 
go  into  a  study  to  think  about  statecraft  is  to  turn 
your  back  on  the  realities  you  are  constantly  needing 


SEEKING    ASSOCIATES       351 

to,  feel  and  test  and  sound  if  your  thinking  is  to  remain 
vital;  to  choose  an  aim  and  pursue  it  in  despite  of 
all  subsequent  questionings  is  to  bury  the  talent  of 
your  mind.  It  is  no  use  dealing  with  the  intricate  as 
though  it  were  simple,  to  leap  haphazard  at  the  first 
course  of  action  that  presents  itself;  the  whole  world 
of  politicians  is  far  too  like  a  man  who  snatches  a 
poker  to  a  failing  watch.  It  is  easy  to  say  he  wants 
to  "  get  something  done,"  but  the  only  sane  thing  to 
do  for  the  moment  is  to  put  aside  that  poker  and  take 
thought  and  get  a  better  implement.  .  .  . 

One  of  the  results  of  these  fundamental  pre- 
occupations of  mine  was  a  curious  irritability  towards 
Margaret  that  I  found  difficult  to  conceal.  It  was  one 
of  the  incidental  cruelties  of  our  position  that  this 
should  happen.  I  was  in  such  doubt  myself,  that  I 
had  no  power  to  phrase  things  for  her  in  a  form  she 
could  use.  Hitherto  I  had  stage-managed  our  "  serious  '' 
conversations.  Now  I  was  too  much  in  earnest  and 
too  uncertain  to  go  on  doing  this.  I  avoided  talk 
with  her.  Her  serene,  sustained  confidence  in  vague 
formulae  and  sentimental  aspirations  exasperated  me; 
her  want  of  sympathetic  apprehension  made  my  few 
efforts  to  indicate  my  changing  attitudes  distressing 
and  futile.  It  wasn't  that  I  was  always  thinking  right, 
and  that  she  was  always  saying  wrong.  It  was  that 
I  was  struggling  to  get  hold  of  a  difficult  thing  that 
was,  at  any  rate,  half  true,  I  could  not  gauge  how 
true,  and  that  Margaret's  habitual  phrasing  ignored 
these  elusive  elements  of  truth,  and  without  pre- 
meditation fitted  into  the  weaknesses  of  my  new 
intimations,  as  though  they  had  nothing  but  weak- 
nesses. It  was,  for  example,  obvious  that  these  big 
people,  who  were  the  backbone  of  Imperialism  and 
Conservatism,  were  temperamentally  lax,  much  more 
indolent,  much  more  sensuous,  than  our  deliberately 


352        THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

virtuous  Young  Liberals.  I  didn't  want  to  be  reminded 
of  that,  just  when  I  was  in  full  effort  to  realise  the 
finer  elements  in  their  composition.  Margaret  classed 
them  and  disposed  of  them.  It  was  our  incurable  dif- 
ferences in  habits  and  gestures  of  thought  coming  be- 
tween us  again. 

The  desert  of  misunderstanding  widened.  I  was 
forced  back  upon  myself  and  my  own  secret  councils. 
For  a  time  I  went  my  way  alone;  an  unmixed  evil  for 
both  of  us.  Except  for  that  Pentagram  evening,  a 
series  of  talks  with  Isabel  Rivers,  who  was  now  becom- 
ing more  and  more  important  in  my  intellectual  life, 
and  the  arguments  I  maintained  with  Crupp,  I  never 
really  opened  my  mind  at  all  during  that  period  of  in- 
decisions, slow  abandonments,  and  slow  acquisition. 


CHAPTER  THE  THIRD 

SECESSION 


AT  last,  out  of  a  vast  accumulation  of  impressions, 
decision  distilled  quite  suddenly.  I  succumbed  to 
Evesham  and  that  dream  of  the  right  thing  triumphant 
through  expression.  I  determined  I  would  go  over  to 
the  Conservatives,  and  use  my  every  gift  and  power  on 
the  side  of  such  forces  on  that  side  as  made  for  edu- 
cational reorganisation,  scientific  research,  literature, 
criticism,  and  intellectual  development.  That  was  in 
1909.  I  judged  the  Tories  were  driving  straight  at  a 
conflict  with  the  country,  and  I  thought  them  bound 
to  incur  an  electoral  defeat.  I  under-estimated  their 
strength  in  the  counties.  There  would  follow,  I  calcu- 
lated, a  period  of  profound  reconstruction  in  method 
and  policy  alike.  I  was  entirely  at  one  with  Crupp  in 
perceiving  in  this  an  immense  opportunity  for  the 
things  we  desired.  An  aristocracy  quickened  by  con- 
flict and  on  the  defensive,  and  full  of  the  idea  of  jus- 
tification by  reconstruction,  might  prove  altogether 
more  apt  for  thought  and  high  professions  than  Mrs. 
Redmondson's  spoilt  children.  Behind  the  now  in- 
evitable struggle  for  a  reform  of  the  House  of  Lords, 
there  would  be  great  heart  searchings  and  educational 
endeavour.  On  that  we  reckoned.  .  .  . 

At  last  we  talked  it  out  to  the  practical  pitch,  and 
Crupp  and  Shoesmith,  and  I  and  Gane,  made  our 
definite  agreement  together.  .  .  . 

I  emerged  from  enormous  silences  upon  Margaret 
one  evening. 

353 


354      THE    NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

She  was  just  back  from  the  display  of  some  new 
musicians  at  the  Hartsteins.  I  remember  she  wore  a 
dress  of  golden  satin,  very  rich-looking  and  splendid. 
About  her  slender  neck  there  was  a  rope  of  gold-set 
amber  beads.  Her  hair  caught  up  and  echoed  and 
returned  these  golden  notes.  I,  too,  was  in  evening 
dress,  but  where  I  had  been  escapes  me, — some  for- 
gotten dinner,  I  suppose.  I  went  into  her  room.  I 
remember  I  didn't  speak  for  some  moments.  I  went 
across  to  the  window  and  pulled  the  blind  aside,  and 
looked  out  upon  the  railed  garden  of  the  square,  with 
its  shrubs  and  shadowed  turf  gleaming  pallidly  and 
irregularly  in  the  light  of  the  big  electric  standard  in 
the  corner. 

"  Margaret,"  I  said,  "  I  think  I  shall  break  with  the 
party." 

She  made  no  answer.  I  turned  presently,  a  move- 
ment of  enquiry. 

"  I  was  afraid  you  meant  to  do  that,"  she  said. 

"  I'm  out  of  touch,"  I  explained.     "  Altogether." 

"Oh!  I  know." 

"  It  places  me  in  a  difficult  position,"  I  said. 

Margaret  stood  at  her  dressing-table,  looking  stead- 
fastly at  herself  in  the  glass,  and  with  her  fingers  play- 
ing with  a  litter  of  stoppered  bottles  of  tinted  glass. 
"  I  was  afraid  it  was  coming  to  this,"  she  said. 

"  In  a  way,"  I  said,  "  we've  been  allies.  I  owe  my 
seat  to  you.  I  couldn't  have  gone  into  Parliament.  .  .  ." 

"  I  don't  want  considerations  like  that  to  affect  us/' 
slie  interrupted. 

There  was  a  pause.  She  sat  down  in  a  chair  by  her 
dressing-table,  lifted  an  ivory  hand-glass,  and  put  it 
down  again. 

"  I  wish,"  she  said,  with  something  like  a  sob  in  her 
voice,  "  it  were  possible  that  you  shouldn't  do  this." 
She  stopped  abruptly,  and  I  did  not  look  at  her,  be- 


SECESSION  355 

cause  I  could  feel  the  effort  she  was  making  to  control 
herself. 

"  I  thought,"  she  began  again,  "  when  you  came  into 
Parliament " 

There  came  another  silence.  "  It's  all  gone  so 
differently,"  she  said.  "  Everything  has  gone  so 
differently." 

I  had  a  sudden  memory  of  her,  shining  triumphant 
after  the  Kinghampstead  election,  and  for  the  first  time 
I  realised  just  how  perplexing  and  disappointing  my 
subsequent  career  must  have  been  to  her. 

"  I'm  not  doing  this  without  consideration,"  I  said. 

"  I  know,"  she  said,  in  a  voice  of  despair,  "  I've  seen 
it  coming.  But — I  still  don't  understand  it.  I  don't 
understand  how  you  can  go  over." 

"  My  ideas  have  changed  and  developed,"  I  said. 

I  walked  across  to  her  bearskin  hearthrug,  and  stood 
by  the  mantel. 

"To  think  that  you,"  she  said;  "you  who  might 

have  been  leader "  She  could  not  finish  it.  "  All 

the  forces  of  reaction,"  she  threw  out. 

"  I  don't  think  they  are  the  forces  of  reaction,"  I 
said.  "  I  think  I  can  find  work  to  do — better  work  on 
that  side." 

"Against  us!"  she  said.  "As  if  progress  wasn't 
hard  enough!  As  if  it  didn't  call  upon  every  able 
man !  " 

"  I  don't  think  Liberalism  has  a  monopoly  of  prog- 
ress." 

She  did  not  answer  that.  She  sat  quite  still  looking 
in  front  of  her.  "  Why  have  you  gone  over  ? "  she 
asked  abruptly  as  though  I  had  said  nothing. 

There  came  a  silence  that  I  was  impelled  to  end.  I 
began  a  stiff  dissertation  from  the  hearthrug.  "  I  am 
going  over,  because  I  think  I  may  join  in  an  intellectual 
renascence  on  the  Conservative  side.  I  think  that  in  the 


356      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

coming  struggle  there  will  be  a  partial  and  altogether 
confused  and  demoralising  victory  for  democracy,  that 
will  stir  the  classes  which  now  dominate  the  Conservative 
party  into  an  energetic  revival.  They  will  set  out  to 
win  back,  and  win  back.  Even  if  my  estimate  of  con- 
temporary forces  is  wrong  and  they  win,  they  will  still 
be  forced  to  reconstruct  their  outlook.  A  war  abroad 
will  supply  the  chastening  if  home  politics  fail.  The 
effort  at  renascence  is  bound  to  come  by  either  alter- 
native. I  believe  I  can  do  more  in  relation  to  that 
effort  than  in  any  other  connexion  in  the  world  of 
politics  at  the  present  time.  That's  my  case,  Margaret." 

She  certainly  did  not  grasp  what  I  said.  "And  so 
you  will  throw  aside  all  the  beginnings,  all  the  beliefs 
and  pledges "  Again, her  sentence  remained  incom- 
plete. "  I  doubt  if  even,  once  you  have  gone  over,  they 
will  welcome  you." 

"  That  hardly  matters." 

I  made  an  effort  to  resume  my  speech. 

"  I  came  into  Parliament,  Margaret,"  I  said,  "  a  little 
prematurely.  Still — I  suppose  it  was  only  by  coming 
into  Parliament  that  I  could  see  things  as  I  do  now  in 
terms  of  personality  and  imaginative  range.  ..."  I 
stopped.  Her  stiff,  unhappy,  unlistening  silence  broke 
up  my  disquisition. 

"After  all,"  I  remarked,  "most  of  this  has  been 
implicit  in  my  writings." 

She  made  no  sign  of  admission. 

"  What  are  you  going  to  do  ?  '  she  asked. 

"  Keep  my  seat  for  a  time  and  make  the  reasons  of 
my  breach  clear.  Then  either  I  must  resign  or — prob- 
ably this  new  Budget  will  lead  to  a  General  Election. 
It's  evidently  meant  to  strain  the  Lords  and  provoke  a 
quarrel," 

"You  might,  I  think,  have  stayed  to  fight  for  the 
Budget." 


SECESSION  357 

"  I'm  not,"  I  said,  "  so  keen  against  the  Lords." 

On  that  we  halted. 

"  But  what  are  you  going  to  do  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  I  shall  make  my  quarrel  over  some  points  in  the 
Budget.  I  can't  quite  tell  you  yet  where  my  chance 
will  come.  Then  I  shall  either  resign  my  seat — or  if 
things  drift  to  dissolution  I  shall  stand  again." 

"It's  political  suicide." 

"  Not  altogether." 

"  I  can't  imagine  you  out  of  Parliament  again.  It's 
just  like — like  undoing  all  we  have  done.  What  will 
you  do  ?  " 

"  Write.  Make  a  new,  more  definite  place  for  my- 
self. You  know,  of  course,  there's  already  a  sort  of 
group  about  Crupp  and  Gane." 

Margaret  seemed  lost  for  a  time  in  painful  thought. 

"  For  me,"  she  said  at  last,  "  our  political  work  has 
been  a  religion — it  has  been  more  than  a  religion." 

I  heard  in  silence.  I  had  no  form  of  protest  avail- 
able against  the  implications  of  that. 

"  And  then  I  find  you  turning  against  all  we  aimed 
to  do — talking  of  going  over,  almost  lightly — to  those 
others."  .  .  . 

She  was  white-lipped  as  she  spoke.  In  the  most 
curious  way  she  had  captured  the  moral  values  of  the 
situation.  I  found  myself  protesting  ineffectually 
against  her  fixed  conviction.  "  It's  because  I  think  my 
duty  lies  in  this  change  that  I  make  it,"  I  said. 

"  I  don't  see  how  you  can  say  that,"  she  replied 
quietly. 

There  was  another  pause  between  us. 

"  Oh ! "  she  said  and  clenched  her  hand  upon  the 
table.  "  That  it  should  have  come  to  this !  " 

She  was  extraordinarily  dignified  and  extraordinarily 
absurd.  She  was  hurt  and  thwarted  beyond  measure. 
She  had  no  place  in  her  ideas,  I  thought,  for  me.  I 

. 

• 


358      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

could  see  how  it  appeared  to  her,  but  I  could  not  make 
her  see  anything  of  the  intricate  process  that  had 
brought  me  to  this  divergence.  The  opposition  of  our 
intellectual  temperaments  was  like  a  gag  in  my  mouth. 
What  was  there  for  me  to  say?  A  flash  of  intuition 
told  me  that  behind  her  white  dignity  was  a  passionate 
disappointment,  a  shattering  of  dreams  that  needed 
before  everything  else  the  relief  of  weeping. 

"  I've  told  you,"  I  said  awkwardly,  "  as  soon  as  I 
could." 

There  was  another  long  silence.  "So  that  is  how  we 
stand/'  I  said  with  an  air  of  having  things  defined.  I 
walked  slowly  to  the  door. 

She  had  risen  and  stood  now  staring  in  front  of  her. 

"  Good-night,"  I  said,  making  no  movement  towards 
our  habitual  kiss. 

"  Good-night,"  she  answered  in  a  tragic  note.  .   .  . 

I  closed  the  door  softly.  I  remained  for  a  moment 
or  so  on  the  big  landing,  hesitating  between  my  bed- 
room and  my  study.  As  I  did  so  I  heard  the  soft  rustle 
of  her  movement  and  the  click  of  the  key  in  her  bed- 
room door.  Then  everything  was  still.  .  .  . 

She  hid  her  tears  from  me.  Something  gripped  my 
heart  at  the  thought. 

"  Damnation ! "  I  said  wincing.  "  Why  the  devil 
can't  people  at  least  think  in  the  same  manner  ?  " 

§   8 

And  that  insufficient  colloquy  was  the  beginning  of 
a  prolonged  estrangement  between  us.  It  was  char- 
acteristic of  our  relations  that  we  never  reopened  the 
discussion.  The  thing  had  been  in  the  air  for  some 
time;  we  had  recognised  it  now;  the  widening  breach 
between  us  was  confessed.  My  own  feelings  were  curi- 
ously divided.  It  is  remarkable  that  my  very  real  affec- 
tion for  Margaret  only  became  evident  to  me  with 


SECESSION  359 

this  quarrel.  The  changes  of  the  heart  are  very  subtle 
changes.  I  am  quite  unaware  how  or  when  my  early 
romantic  love  for  her  purity  and  beauty  and  high-prin- 
cipled devotion  evaporated  from  my  life;  but  I  do 
know  that  quite  early  in  my  parliamentary  days  there 
had  come  a  vague,  unconfessed  resentment  at  the  tie 
that  seemed  to  hold  me  in  servitude  to  her  standards 
of  private  living  and  public  act.  I  felt  I  was  caught, 
and  none  the  less  so  because  it  had  been  my  own  act  to 
rivet  on  my  shackles.  So  long  as  I  still  held  myself 
bound  to  her  that  resentment  grew.  Now,  since  I 
had  broken  my  bonds  and  taken  my  line  it  withered 
again,  and  I  could  think  of  Margaret  with  a  returning 
kindliness. 

But  I  still  felt  embarrassment  with  her.  I  felt 
myself  dependent  upon  her  for  house  room  and  food 
and  social  support,  as  it  were  under  false  pretences.  I 
would  have  liked  to  have  separated  our  financial  affairs 
altogether.  But  I  knew  that  to  raise  the  issue  would 
have  seemed  a  last  brutal  indelicacy.  So  I  tried  almost 
furtively  to  keep  my  personal  expenditure  within  the 
scope  of  the  private  income  I  made  by  writing,  and  we 
went  out  together  in  her  motor  brougham,  dined  and 
made  appearances,  met  politely  at  breakfast — parted  at 
night  with  a  kiss  upon  her  cheek.  The  locking  of  her 
door  upon  me,  which  at  that  time  I  quite  understood, 
which  I  understand  now,  became  for  a  time  in  my  mind, 
through  some  obscure  process  of  the  soul,  an  offence. 
I  never  crossed  the  landing  to  her  room  again. 

In  all  this  matter,  and,  indeed,  in  all  my  relations 
with  Margaret,  I  perceive  now  I  behaved  badly  and 
foolishly.  My  manifest  blunder  is  that  I,  who  was 
several  years  older  than  she,  much  subtler  and  in  many 
ways  wiser,  never  in  any  measure  sought  to  guide  and 
control  her.  After  our  marriage  I  treated  her  always 
as  an  equal,  and  let  her  go  her  way;  held  her  respon- 


860      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

sible  for  all  the  weak  and  ineffective  and  unfortunate 
things  she  said  and  did  to  me.  She  wasn't  clever 
enough  to  justify  that.  It  wasn't  fair  to  expect  her  to 
sympathise,  anticipate,  and  understand.  I  ought  to 
have  taken  care  of  her,  roped  her  to  me  when  it  came 
to  crossing  the  difficult  places.  If  I  had  loved  her 
more,  and  wiselier  and  more  tenderly,  if  there  had  not 
been  the  consciousness  of  my  financial  dependence  on 
her  always  stiffening  my  pride,  I  think  she  would  have 
moved  with  me  from  the  outset,  and  left  the  Liberals 
with  me.  But  she  did  not  get  any  inkling  of  the  ends 
I  sought  in  my  change  of  sides.  It  must  have  seemed 
to  her  inexplicable  perversity.  She  had,  I  knew  —  for 
surely  I  knew  it  then  !  —  an  immense  capacity  for  loyalty 
and  devotion.  There  she  was  with  these  treasures  un- 
touched, neglected  and  perplexed.  A  woman  who  loves 
wants  to  give.  It  is  the  duty  and  business  of  the  man 
she  has  married  for  love  to  help  her  to  help  and  give. 
But  I  was  stupid.  My  eyes  had  never  been  opened. 
I  was  stiff  with  her  and  difficult  to  her,  because  even 
on  my  wedding  morning  there  had  been,  deep  down  in 
my  soul,  voiceless  though  present,  something  weakly 
protesting,  a  faint  perception  of  wrong-doing,  the 
infinitesimally  small,  slow-multiplying  germs  of  shame. 


I  made  my  breach  with  the  party  on  the  Budget. 

In  many  ways  I  was  disposed  to  regard  the  1909 
Budget  as  a  fine  piece  of  statecraft.  Its  production 
was  certainly  a  very  unexpected  display  of  vigour  on 
the  Liberal  side.  But,  on  the  whole,  this  movement 
towards  collectivist  organisation  on  the  part  of  the 
Liberals  rather  strengthened  than  weakened  my  resolve 
to  cross  the  floor  of  the  house.  It  made  it  more  neces- 
sary, I  thought,  to  leaven  the  purely  obstructive  and 
reactionary  elements  that  were  at  once  manifest  in  the 


SECESSION  361 

opposition.  I  assailed  the  land  taxation  proposals  in 
one  main  speech,  and  a  series  of  minor  speeches  in  com- 
mittee. The  line  of  attack  I  chose  was  that  the  land 
was  a  great  public  service  that  needed  to  be  controlled 
on  broad  and  far-sighted  lines.  I  had  no  objection  to 
its  nationalisation,  but  I  did  object  most  strenuously 
to  the  idea  of  leaving  it  in  private  hands,  and  attempt- 
ing to  produce  beneficial  social  results  through  the  pres- 
sure of  taxation  upon  the  land-owning  class.  That 
might  break  it  up  in  an  utterly  disastrous  way.  The 
drift  of  the  government  proposals  was  all  in  the  direc- 
tion of  sweating  the  landowner  to  get  immediate  values 
from  his  property,  and  such  a  course  of  action  was 
bound  to  give  us  an  irritated  and  vindictive  land-owning 
class,  the  class  upon  which  we  had  hitherto  relied — not 
unjustifiably — for  certain  broad,  patriotic  services  and 
an  influence  upon  our  collective  judgments  that  no 
other  class  seemed  prepared  to  exercise.  Abolish  land- 
lordism if  you  will,  I  said,  buy  it  out,  but  do  not  drive 
it  to  a  defensive  fight,  and  leave  it  still  sufficiently 
strong  and  wealthy  to  become  a  malcontent  element  in 
your  state.  You  have  taxed  and  controlled  the  brewer 
and  the  publican  until  the  outraged  Liquor  Interest 
has  become  a  national  danger.  You  now  propose  to 
do  the  same  thing  on  a  larger  scale.  You  turn  a  class 
which  has  many  fine  and  truly  aristocratic  traditions 
towards  revolt,  and  there  is  nothing  in  these  or  any 
other  of  your  proposals  that  shows  any  sense  of  the 
need  for  leadership  to  replace  these  traditional  leaders 
you  are  ousting.  This  was  the  substance  of  my  case, 
and  I  hammered  at  it  not  only  in  the  House,  but  in 
the  press.  .  .  . 

The  Kinghampstead  division  remained  for  some  time 
insensitive  to  my  defection. 

Then  it  woke  up  suddenly,  and  began,  in  the  col- 
umns of  the  Kingshampstead  Guardian,  an  indignant. 


362      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

confused  outcry.  I  was  treated  to  an  open  letter, 
signed  "  Junius  Secundus,"  and  I  replied  in  provocative 
terms.  There  were  two  thinly  attended  public  meet- 
ings at  different  ends  of  the  constituency,  and  then  I 
had  a  correspondence  with  my  old  friend  Parvill,  the 
photographer,  which  ended  in  my  seeing  a  deputation. 

My  impression  is  that  it  consisted  of  about  eighteen 
or  twenty  people.  They  had  had  to  come  upstairs  to 
me  and  they  were  manifestly  full  of  indignation  and 
a  little  short  of  breath.  There  was  Parvill  himself, 
J.P.,  dressed  wholly  in  black — I  think  to  mark  his 
sense  of  the  occasion — and  curiously  suggestive  in  his 
respect  for  my  character  and  his  concern  for  the 
honourableness  of  the  Kinghampstead  Guardian  editor, 
of  Mark  Antony  at  the  funeral  of  Caesar.  There  was 
Mrs.  Bulger,  also  in  mourning;  she  had  never  aban- 
doned the  widow's  streamers  since  the  death  of  her 
husband  ten  years  ago,  and  her  loyalty  to  Liberalism 
of  the  severest  type  was  part  as  it  were  of  her  weeds. 
There  was  a  nephew  of  Sir  Roderick  Newton,  a  bright 
young  Hebrew  of  the  graver  type,  and  a  couple  of 
dissenting  ministers  in  high  collars  and  hats  that 
stopped  halfway  between  the  bowler  of  this  world  and 
the  shovel-hat  of  heaven.  There  was  also  a  young 
solicitor  from  Lurky  done  in  the  horsey  style,  and 
there  was  a  very  little  nervous  man  with  a  high  brow 
and  a  face  contracting  below  as  though  the  jawbones 
and  teeth  had  been  taken  out  and  the  features  com- 
pressed. The  rest  of  the  deputation,  which  included 
two  other  public-spirited  ladies  and  several  ministers 
of  religion,  might  have  been  raked  out  of  any  omnibus 
going  Strandward  during  the  May  meetings.  They 
thrust  Parvill  forward  as  spokesman,  and  manifested 
a  strong  disposition  to  say  "  Hear,  hear ! "  to  his 
more  strenuous  protests  provided  my  eye  wasn't  upon 
them  at  the  time. 


SECESSION  363 

I  regarded  this  appalling  deputation  as  Parvill's 
apologetic  but  quite  definite  utterances  drew  to  an 
end.  I  had  a  moment  of  vision.  Behind  them  I  saw 
the  wonderful  array  of  skeleton  forces  that  stand  for 
public  opinion,  that  are  as  much  public  opinion  as 
exists  indeed  at  the  present  time.  The  whole  process 
of  politics  which  bulks  so  solidly  in  history  seemed  for 
that  clairvoyant  instant  but  a  froth  of  petty  motives 
above  abysms  of  indifference.  .  .  . 

Some  one  had  finished.     I  perceived  I  had  to  speak. 

"  Very  well,"  I  said,  "  I  won't  keep  you  long  in 
replying.  I'll  resign  if  there  isn't  a  dissolution  before 
next  February,  and  if  there  is  I  shan't  stand  again. 
You  don't  want  the  bother  and  expense  of  a  bye- 
election  (approving  murmurs)  if  it  can  be  avoided. 
But  I  may  tell  you  plainly  now  that  I  don't  think  it 
will  be  necessary  for  me  to  resign,  and  the  sooner  you 
find  my  successor  the  better  for  the  party.  The  Lords 
are  in  a  corner;  they've  got  to  fight  now  or  never, 
and  I  think  they  will  throw  out  the  Budget.  Then 
they  will  go  on  fighting.  It  is  a  fight  that  will  last 
for  years.  They  have  a  sort  of  social  discipline,  and 
you  haven't.  You  Liberals  will  find  yourselves  with 
a  country  behind  you,  vaguely  indignant  perhaps,  but 
totally  unprepared  with  any  ideas  whatever  in  the 
matter,  face  to  face  with  the  problem  of  bringing  the 
British  constitution  up-to-date.  Anything  may  happen, 
provided  only  that  it  is  sufficiently  absurd.  If  the 
King  backs  the  Lords — and  I  don't  see  why  he 
shouldn't — you  have  no  Republican  movement  what- 
ever to  fall  back  upon.  You  lost  it  during  the  Era 
of  Good  Taste.  The  country,  I  say,  is  destitute  of 
ideas,  and  you  have  no  ideas  to  give  it.  I  don't  see 
what  you  will  do.  .  .  .  For  my  own  part,  I  mean  to 
spend  a  year  or  so  between  a  window  and  my  writing- 
desk." 


364      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

I  paused.  "  I  think,  gentlemen/'  began  Parvill, 
"  that  we  hear  all  this  with  very  great  regret.  .  .  ." 

§   4 

My  estrangement  from  Margaret  stands  in  my 
memory  now  as  something  that  played  itself  out  within 
the  four  walls  of  our  house  in  Radnor  Square,  which 
was,  indeed,  confined  to  those  limits.  I  went  to  and 
fro  between  my  house  and  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  the  dining-rooms  and  clubs  and  offices  in  which 
we  were  preparing  our  new  developments,  in  a  state 
of  aggressive  and  energetic  dissociation,  in  the  nascent 
state,  as  a  chemist  would  say.  I  was  free  now,  and 
greedy  for  fresh  combination.  I  had  a  tremendous 
sense  of  released  energies.  I  had  got  back  to  the  sort 
of  thing  I  could  do,  and  to  the  work  that  had  been 
shaping  itself  for  so  long  in  my  imagination.  Our 
purpose  now  was  plain,  bold,  and  extraordinarily  con- 
genial. We  meant  no  less  than  to  organise  a  new 
movement  in  English  thought  and  life,  to  resuscitate 
a  Public  Opinion  and  prepare  the  ground  for  a  revised 
and  renovated  ruling  culture. 

For  a  time  I  seemed  quite  wonderfully  able  to  do 
whatever  I  wanted  to  do.  Shoesmith  responded  to  my 
first  advances.  We  decided  to  create  a  weekly  paper 
as  our  nucleus,  and  Crupp  and  I  set  to  work  forthwith 
to  collect  a  group  of  writers  and  speakers,  including 
Esmeer,  Britten,  Lord  Gane,  Neal,  and  one  or  two 
younger  men,  which  should  constitute  a  more  or  less 
definite  editorial  council  about  me,  and  meet  at  a 
weekly  lunch  on  Tuesday  to  sustain  our  general  co- 
operations. We  marked  our  claim  upon  Toryism  even 
in  the  colour  of  our  wrapper,  and  spoke  of  ourselves 
collectively  as  the  Blue  Weeklies.  But  our  lunches 
were  open  to  all  sorts  of  guests,  and  our  deliberations 
were  never  of  a  character  to  control  me  effectively  in 


SECESSION  365 

my  editorial  decisions.  My  only  influential  councillor 
at  first  was  old  Britten,  who  became  my  sub-editor. 
It  was  curious  how  we  two  had  picked  up  our  ancient 
intimacy  again  and  resumed  the  easy  give  and  take  of 
our  speculative  dreaming  schoolboy  days. 

For  a  time  my  life  centred  altogether  upon  this 
journalistic  work.  Britten  was  an  experienced  jour- 
nalist, and  I  had  most  of  the  necessary  instincts  for  the 
business.  We  meant  to  make  the  paper  right  and 
good  down  to  the  smallest  detail,  and  we  set  ourselves 
at  this  with  extraordinary  zeal.  It  wasn't  our  intention 
to  show  our  political  motives  too  markedly  at  first,  and 
through  all  the  dust  storm  and  tumult  and  stress  of  the 
political  struggle  of  1910,  we  made  a  little  intellectual 
oasis  of  good  art  criticism  and  good  writing.  It  was 
the  firm  belief  of  nearly  all  of  us  that  the  Lords  were 
destined  to  be  beaten  badly  in  1910,  and  our  game  was 
the  longer  game  of  reconstruction  that  would  begin 
when  the  shouting  and  tumult  of  that  immediate  con- 
flict were  over.  Meanwhile  we  had  to  get  into  touch 
with  just  as  many  good  minds  as  possible. 

As  we  felt  our  feet,  I  developed  slowly  and  carefully 
a  broadly  conceived  and  consistent  political  attitude. 
As  I  will  explain  later,  we  were  feminist  from  the  out- 
set, though  that  caused  Shoesmith  and  Gane  great 
searching  of  heart;  we  developed  Esmeer's  House  of 
Lords  reform  scheme  into  a  general  cult  of  the  aristo- 
cratic virtues,  and  we  did  much  to  humanise  and 
liberalise  the  narrow  excellencies  of  that  Break-up  of 
the  Poor  Law  agitation,  which  had  been  organised  orig- 
inally by  Beatrice  and  Sidney  Webb.  In  addition, 
without  any  very  definite  explanation  to  any  one  but 
Esmeer  and  Isabel  Rivers,  and  as  if  it  was  quite  a  small 
matter,  I  set  myself  to  secure  a  uniform  philosophical 
quality  in  our  columns. 

That,  indeed,  was  the  peculiar  virtue  and  character- 


366      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

istic  of  the  Blue  Weekly.  I  was  now  very  definitely 
convinced  that  much  of  the  confusion  and  futility  of 
contemporary  thought  was  due  to  the  general  need 

of  metaphysical  training The  great  mass  of 

people — and  not  simply  common  people,  but  people 
active  and  influential  in  intellectual  things — are  still 
quite  untrained  in  the  methods  of  thought  and  abso- 
lutely innocent  of  any  criticism  of  method;  it  is 
scarcely  a  caricature  to  call  their  thinking  a  crazy 
patchwork,  discontinuous  and  chaotic.  They  arrive  at 
conclusions  by  a  kind  of  accident,  and  do  not  suspect 
any  other  way  may  be  found  to  their  attainment.  A 
stage  above  this  general  condition  stands  that  minority 
of  people  who  have  at  some  time  or  other  discovered 
general  terms  and  a  certain  use  for  generalisations. 
They  are — to  fall  back  on  the  ancient  technicality-- 
Realists of  a  crude  sort.  When  I  say  Realist  of  course 
I  mean  Realist  as  opposed  to  Nominalist,  and  not  Real- 
ist in  the  almost  diametrically  different  sense  of  oppo- 
sition to  Idealist.  Such  are  the  Baileys;  such,  to 
take  their  great  prototype,  was  Herbert  Spencer 
(who  couldn't  read  Kant) ;  such  are  whole  regiments 
of  prominent  and  entirely  self-satisfied  contemporaries. 
They  go  through  queer  little  processes  of  definition 
and  generalisation  and  deduction  with  the  completest 
belief  in  the  validity  of  the  intellectual  instrument 
they  are  using.  They  are  Realists — Cocksurists — in 
matter  of  fact;  sentimentalists  in  behaviour.  The 
Baileys  having  got  to  this  glorious  stage  in  mental  de- 
velopment— it  is  glorious  because  it  has  no  doubts-—, 
were  always  talking  about  training  "  Experts  "  to  apply 
the  same  simple  process  to  all  the  affairs  of  mankind. 
Well,  Realism  isn't  the  last  word  of  human  wisdom. 
Modest-minded  people,  doubtful  people,  subtle  people, 
and  the  like — the  kind  of  people  William  James  writes 
of  as  "tough-minded,"  go  on  beyond  this  methodical 


SECESSION  367 

happiness,  and  are  forever  after  critical  of  premises 
and  terms.  They  are  truer — and  less  confident.  They 
have  reached  scepticism  and  the  artistic  method.  They 
have  emerged  into  the  new  Nominalism. 

Both  Isabel  and  I  believe  firmly  that  these  differences 
of  intellectual  method  matter  profoundly  in  the  affairs 
of  mankind,  that  the  collective  mind  of  this  intricate 
complex  modern  state  can  only  function  properly  upon 
neo-Nominalist  lines.  This  has  always  been  her  side 
of  our  mental  co-operation  rather  than  mine.  Her 
mind  has  the  light  movement  that  goes  so  often  with 
natural  mental  power;  she  has  a  wonderful  art  in  illus- 
tration, and,  as  the  reader  probably  knows  already, 
she  writes  of  metaphysical  matters  with  a  rare  charm 
and  vividness.  So  far  there  has  been  no  collection  of 
her  papers  published,  but  they  are  to  be  found  not 
only  in  the  Blue  Weekly  columns  but  scattered  about 
the  monthlies;  many  people  must  be  familiar  with  her 
style.  It  was  an  intention  we  did  much  to  realise  be- 
fore our  private  downfall,  that  we  would  use  the  Blue 
Weekly  to  maintain  a  stream  of  suggestion  against 
crude  thinking,  and  at  last  scarcely  a  week  passed  but 
some  popular  distinction,  some  large  imposing  gener- 
alisation, was  touched  to  flaccidity  by  her  pen  or 
mine.  .  .  . 

I  was  at  great  pains  to  give  my  philosophical,  polit- 
ical, and  social  matter  the  best  literary  and  critical 
backing  we  could  get  in  London.  I  hunted  sedulously 
for  good  descriptive  writing  and  goood  criticism;  I  was 
indefatigable  in  my  readiness  to  hear  and  consider,  if 
not  to  accept  advice;  I  watched  every  corner  of  the 
paper,  and  had  a  dozen  men  alert  to  get  me  special 
matter  of  the  sort  that  draws  in  the  unattached  reader. 
The  chief  danger  on  the  literary  side  of  a  weekly  is 
that  it  should  fall  into  the  hands  of  some  particular 
school,  and  this  I  watched  for  closely.  It  seems  almost 


368      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

impossible  to  get  vividness  of  apprehension  and  breadth 
of  view  together  in  the  same  critic.  So  it  falls  to  the 
wise  editor  to  secure  the  first  and  impose  the  second. 
Directly  I  detected  the  shrill  partisan  note  in  our  crit- 
icism, the  attempt  to  puff  a  poor  thing  because  it  was 
"  in  the  right  direction,,"  or  damn  a  vigorous  piece  of 
work  because  it  wasn't,  I  tackled  the  man  and  had  it 
out  with  him.  Our  pay  was  good  enough  for  that  to 
matter  a  good  deal.  .  .  . 

Our  distinctive  little  blue  and  white  poster  kept  up 
its  neat  persistent  appeal  to  the  public  eye,  and  before 
1911  was  out,  the  Blue  Weekly  was  printing  twenty 
pages  of  publishers'  advertisements,  and  went  into  all 
the  clubs  in  London  and  three-quarters  of  the  country 
houses  where  week-end  parties  gather  together.  Its 
sale  by  newsagents  and  bookstalls  grew  steadily.  One 
got  more  and  more  the  reassuring  sense  of  being  dis- 
cussed, and  influencing  discussion. 

§   5 

Our  office  was  at  the  very  top  of  a  big  building  near 
the  end  of  Adelphi  Terrace;  the  main  window  beside 
my  desk,  a  big  undivided  window  of  plate  glass,  looked 
out  upon  Cleopatra's  Needle,  the  corner  of  the  Hotel 
Cecil,  the  fine  arches  of  Waterloo  Bridge,  and  the  long 
sweep  of  south  bank  with  its  shot  towers  and  chimneys, 
past  Bankside  to  the  dimly  seen  piers  of  the  great  bridge 
below  the  Tower.  The  dome  of  St.  Paul's  just  floated 
into  view  on  the  left  against  the  hotel  fa9ade.  By 
night  and  day,  in  every  light  and  atmosphere,  it  was  a 
beautiful  and  various  view,  alive  as  a  throbbing  heart; 
a  perpetual  flow  of  traffic  ploughed  and  splashed  the 
streaming  silver  of  the  river,  and  by  night  the  shapes 
of  things  became  velvet  black  and  grey,  and  the  water 
a  shining  mirror  of  steel,  wearing  coruscating  gems  of 
light.  In  the  foreground  the  Embankment  trams  sailed 


SECESSION  369 

glowing  by,  across  the  water  advertisements  flashed  and 
flickered,  trains  went  and  came  and  a  rolling  drift  of 
smoke  reflected  unseen  fires.  By  day  that  spectacle 
was  sometimes  a  marvel  of  shining  wet  and  wind-cleared 
atmosphere,  sometimes  a  mystery  of  drifting  fog,  some- 
times a  miracle  of  crowded  details,  minutely  fine. 

As  I  think  of  that  view,  so  variously  spacious  in 
effect,  I  am  back  there,  and  this  sunlit  paper  might  be 
lamp-lit  and  lying  on  my  old  desk.  I  see  it  all  again, 
feel  it  all  again.  In  the  foreground  is  a  green  shaded 
lamp  and  crumpled  galley  slips  and  paged  proofs  and 
letters,  two  or  three  papers  in  manuscript,  and  so  forth. 
In  the  shadows  are  chairs  and  another  table  bearing 
papers  and  books,  a  rotating  bookcase  dimly  seen,  a  long 
window  seat  black  in  the  darkness,  and  then  the  cool 
unbroken  spectacle  of  the  window.  How  often  I  would 
watch  some  tram-car,  some  string  of  barges  go  from 
me  slowly  out  of  sight.  The  people  were  black  animal- 
culae  by  day,  clustering,  collecting,  dispersing,  by 
night,  they  were  phantom  face-specks  coming,  vanish- 
ing, stirring  obscurely  between  light  and  shade. 

I  recall  many  hours  at  my  desk  in  that  room  before 
the  crisis  came,  hours  full  of  the  peculiar  happiness  of 
effective  strenuous  work.  Once  some  piece  of  writing 
went  on,  holding  me  intent  and  forgetful  of  time  until 
I  looked  up  from  the  warm  circle  of  my  electric  lamp 
to  see  the  eastward  sky  above  the  pale  silhouette  of 
the  Tower  Bridge,  flushed  and  banded  brightly  with 
the  dawn. 


CHAPTER    THE    FOURTH 

THE    BESETTING   OF   SEX 


ART  is  selection  and  so  is  most  autobiography.  But  I 
am  concerned  with  a  more  tangled  business  than  selec- 
tion, I  want  to  show  a  contemporary  man  in  relation 
to  the  state  and  social  usage,  and  the  social  organism 
in  relation  to  that  man.  To  tell  my  story  at  all  I  have 
to  simplify.  I  have  given  now  the  broad  lines  of  my 
political  development,  and  how  I  passed  from  my  initial 
liberal-socialism  to  the  conception  of  a  constructive  aris- 
tocracy. I  have  tried  to  set  that  out  in  the  form  of  a 
man  discovering  himself.  Incidentally  that  self-de- 
velopment led  to  a  profound  breach  with  my  wife.  One 
has  read  stories  before  of  husband  and  wife  speaking 
severally  two  different  languages  and  coming  to  an 
understanding.  But  Margaret  and  I  began  in  her  dia- 
lect, and,  as  I  came  more  and  more  to  use  my  own,  di- 
verged. 

I  had  thought  when  I  married  that  the  matter  of 
womankind  had  ended  for  me.  I  have  tried  to  tell  all 
that  sex  and  women  had  been  to  me  up  to  my  married 
life  with  Margaret  and  our  fatal  entanglement,  tried  to 
show  the  queer,  crippled,  embarrassed  and  limited  way 
in  which  these  interests  break  upon  the  life  of  a  young 
man  under  contemporary  conditions.  I  do  not  think 
my  lot  was  a  very  exceptional  one.  I  missed  the  chance 
of  sisters  and  girl  playmates,  but  that  is  not  an  un- 
common misadventure  in  an  age  of  small  families;  I 

370 


THE     BESETTING     OF     SEX     371 

never  came  to  know  any  woman  at  all  intimately  until 
I  was  married  to  Margaret.  My  earlier  love  affairs 
were  encounters  of  sex,  under  conditions  of  furtiveness 
and  adventure  that  made  them  things  in  themselves, 
restricted  and  unilluminating.  From  a  boyish  dis- 
position to  be  mystical  and  worshipping  towards  women 
I  had  passed  into  a  disregardful  attitude,  as  though 
women  were  things  inferior  or  irrelevant,  disturbers 
in  great  affairs.  For  a  time  Magaret  had  blotted  out 
all  other  women;  she  was  so  different  and  so  near;  she 
was  like  a  person  who  stands  suddenly  in  front  of  a 
little  window  through  which  one  has  been  surveying  a 
crowd.  She  didn't  become  womankind  for  me  so  much 
as  eliminate  womankind  from  my  world.  .  .  .  And  then 
came  this  secret  separation.  .  .  . 

Until  this  estrangement  and  the  rapid  and  uncon- 
trollable development  of  my  relations  with  Isabel  which 
chanced  to  follow  it,  I  seemed  to  have  solved  the  prob- 
lem of  women  by  marriage  and  disregard.  I  thought 
these  things  were  over.  I  went  about  my  career  with 
Margaret  beside  me,  her  brow  slightly  knit,  her  man- 
ner faintly  strenuous,  helping,  helping;  and  if  we  had 
not  altogether  abolished  sex  we  had  at  least  so  circum- 
scribed and  isolated  it  that  it  would  not  have  affected 
the  general  tenor  of  our  lives  in  the  slightest  degree  if 
we  had. 

And  then,  clothing  itself  more  and  more  in  the  form 
of  Isabel  and  her  problems,  this  old,  this  fundamental 
obsession  of  my  life  returned.  The  thing  stole  upon 
my  mind  so  that  I  was  unaware  of  its  invasion  and  how 
it  was  changing  our  long  intimacy.  I  have  already 
compared  the  lot  of  the  modern  publicist  to  Machia- 
velli  writing  in  his  study;  in  his  day  women  and  sex 
were  as  disregarded  in  these  high  affairs  as,  let  us  say, 
the  chemistry  of  air  or  the  will  of  the  beasts  in  the 
fields;  in  ours  the  case  has  altogether  changed,  and 


872      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

woman  has  come  now  to  stand  beside  the  tall  candles, 
half  in  the  light,  half  in  the  mystery  of  the  shadows, 
besetting,  interrupting,  demanding  unrelentingly  an  al- 
together unprecedented  attention.  I  feel  that  in  these 
matters  my  life  has  been  almost  typical  of  my  time. 
Woman  insists  upon  her  presence.  She  is  no  longer 
a  mere  physical  need,  an  aesthetic  bye-play,  a  senti- 
mental background;  she  is  a  moral  and  intellectual 
necessity  in  a  man's  life.  She  comes  to  the  politician 
and  demands,  Is  she  a  child  or  a  citizen?  Is  she  a 
thing  or  a  soul?  She  comes  to  the  individual  man,  as 
she  came  to  me  and  asks,  Is  she  a  cherished  weakling 
or  an  equal  mate,  an  unavoidable  helper?  Is  she  to 
be  tried  and  trusted  or  guarded  and  controlled,  bond 
or  free?  For  if  she  is  a  mate,  one  must  at  once  trust 
more  and  exact  more,  exacting  toil,  courage,  and  the 
hardest,  most  necessary  thing  of  all,  the  clearest,  most 
shameless,  explicitness  of  understanding.  .  .  . 


In  all  my  earlier  imaginings  of  statecraft  I  had 
tacitly  assumed  either  that  the  relations  of  the  sexes 
•were  all  right  or  that  anyhow  they  didn't  concern  the 
state.  It  was  a  matter  they,  whoever  "they"  were, 
had  to  settle  among  themselves.  That  sort  of  disre- 
gard was  possible  then.  But  even  before  1906  there 
were  endless  intimations  that  the  dams  holding  back 
great  reservoirs  of  discussion  were  crumbling.  We 
political  schemers  were  ploughing  wider  than  any  one 
had  ploughed  before  in  the  field  of  social  reconstruc- 
tion. We  had  also,  we  realised,  to  plough  deeper.  We 
had  to  plough  down  at  last  to  the  passionate  elements 
of  sexual  relationship  and  examine  and  decide  upon 
them 

The  signs  multiplied.  In  a  year  or  so  half  the  police 
of  the  metropolis  were  scarce  sufficient  to  protect  the 


THE    BESETTING    OF     SEX     373 

House  from  one  clamorous  aspect  of  the  new  problem. 
The  members  went  about  Westminster  with  an  odd,  new 
sense  of  being  beset.  A  good  proportion  of  us  kept 
up  the  pretence  that  the  Vote  for  Women  was  an  iso- 
lated fad,  and  the  agitation  an  epidemic  madness  that 
would  presently  pass.  But  it  was  manifest  to  any  one 
who  sought  more  than  comfort  in  the  matter  that  the 
streams  of  women  and  sympathisers  and  money  forth- 
coming marked  far  deeper  and  wider  things  than  an 
idle  fancy  for  the  franchise.  The  existing  laws  and 
conventions  of  relationship  between  Man  and  Woman 
were  just  as  unsatisfactory  a  disorder  as  anything  else 
in  our  tumbled  confusion  of  a  world,  and  that  also  was 
coming  to  bear  upon  statecraft. 

My  first  parliament  was  the  parliament  of  the  Suf- 
fragettes. I  don't  propose  to  tell  here  of  that  amaz- 
ing campaign,  wih  its  absurdities  and  follies,  its  cour- 
age and  devotion.  There  were  aspects  of  that  un- 
quenchable agitation  that  were  absolutely  heroic  and 
aspects  that  were  absolutely  pitiful.  It  was  unreason- 
able, unwise,  and,  except  for  its  one  central  in- 
sistence, astonishingly  incoherent.  It  was  amazingly 
effective.  The  very  incoherence  of  the  demand  wit- 
nessed, I  think,  to  the  forces  that  lay  behind  it.  It 
wasn't  a  simple  argument  based  on  a  simple  assump- 
tion; it  was  the  first  crude  expression  of  a  great  mass 
and  mingling  of  convergent  feelings,  of  a  widespread, 
confused  persuasion  among  modern  educated  women 
that  the  conditions  of  their  relations  with  men  were  op- 
pressive, ugly,  dishonouring,  and  had  to  be  altered. 
They  had  not  merely  adopted  the  Vote  as  a  symbol  of 
equality;  it  was  fairly  manifest  to  me  that,  given  it, 
they  meant  to  use  it,  and  to  use  it  perhaps  even  vin- 
dictively and  blindly,  as  a  weapon  against  many  things 
they  had  every  reason  to  hate.  .  .  . 

I    remember,  with   exceptional  vividness,   that   great 


374      THE    NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

night  early  in  the  session  of  1909,  when — I  think  it 
was — fifty  or  sixty  women  went  to  prison.  I  had  been 
dining  at  the  Barham's,  and  Lord  Barham  and  I  carne 
down  from  the  direction  of  St.  James's  Park  into  a 
crowd  and  a  confusion  outside  the  Caxton  Hall.  We 
found  ourselves  drifting  with  an  immense  multitude 
towards  Parliament  Square  and  parallel  with  a  silent, 
close-packed  column  of  girls  and  women,  for  the  most 
part  white-faced  and  intent.  I  still  remember  the  ef- 
fect of  their  faces  upon  me.  It  was  quite  diiferent 
from  the  general  effect  of  staring  about  and  divided 
attention  one  gets  in  a  political  procession  of  men. 
There  was  an  expression  of  heroic  tension. 

There  had  been  a  pretty  deliberate  appeal  on  the 
part  of  the  women's  organisers  to  the  Unemployed,  who 
had  been  demonstrating  throughout  that  winter,  to  join 
forces  with  the  movement,  and  the  result  was  shown 
in  the  quality  of  the  crowd  upon  the  pavement.  It  was 
an  ugly,  dangerous-looking  crowd,  but  as  yet  good-tem- 
pered and  sympathetic.  When  at  last  we  got  within 
sight  of  the  House  the  square  was  a  seething  seat  of 
excited  people,  and  the  array  of  police  on  horse  and 
on  foot  might  have  been  assembled  for  a  revolutionary 
outbreak.  There  were  dense  masses  of  people  up 
Whitehall,  and  right  on  to  Westminster  Bridge.  The 
scuffle  that  ended  in  the  arrests  was  the  poorest  explo- 
sion to  follow  such  stupendous  preparations.  .  .  . 

§   3 

Later  on  in  that  year  the  women  began  a  new  at- 
tack. Day  and  night,  and  all  through  the  long  nights 
of  the  Budget  sittings,  at  all  the  piers  of  the  gates  of 
New  Palace  Yard  and  at  St.  Stephen's  Porch,  stood 
women  pickets,  and  watched  us  silently  and  reproach- 
fully as  we  went  to  and  fro.  They  were  women  of  all 
sorts,  though,  of  course,  the  independent  worker-class 


THE     BESETTING    OF     SEX     375 

predominated.  There  were  grey-headed  old  ladies 
standing  there,  sturdily  charming  in  the  rain;  battered- 
looking,  ambiguous  women,  with  something  of  the  des- 
perate bitterness  of  battered  women  showing  in  their 
eyes;  north-country  factory  girls;  cheaply-dressed  sub- 
urban women;  trim,  comfortable  mothers  of  families; 
valiant-eyed  girl  graduates  and  undergraduates;  lank, 
hungry-looking  creatures,  who  stirred  one's  imagination; 
one  very  dainty  little  woman  in  deep  mourning,  I  re- 
call, grave  and  steadfast,  with  eyes  fixed  on  distant 
things.  Some  of  those  women  looked  defiant,  some 
timidly  aggressive,  some  full  of  the  stir  of  adventure, 
some  drooping  with  cold  and  fatigue.  The  supply 
never  ceased.  I  had  a  mortal  fear  that  somehow  the 
supply  might  halt  or  cease.  I  found  that  continual 
siege  of  the  legislature  extraordinarily  impressive — 
infinitely  more  impressive  than  the  feeble-forcible 
"  ragging "  of  the  more  militant  section.  I  thought 
of  the  appeal  that  must  be  going  through  the  country, 
summoning  the  women  from  countless  scattered  homes, 
rooms,  colleges,  to  Westminster. 

I  remember  too  the  petty  little  difficulty  I  felt 
whether  I  should  ignore  these  pickets  altogether,  or 
lift  a  hat  as  I  hurried  past  with  averted  eyes,  or  look 
them  in  the  face  as  I  did  so.  Towards  the  end  the 
House  evoked  an  etiquette  of  salutation. 

§4 

There  was  a  tendency,  even  on  the  part  of  its  sym- 
pathisers, to  treat  the  whole  suffrage  agitation  as  if  it 
were  a  disconnected  issue,  irrelevant  to  all  other  broad 
developments  of  social  and  political  life.  We  struggled, 
all  of  us,  to  ignore  the  indicating  finger  it  thrust  out 
before  us.  "  Your  schemes,  for  all  their  bigness,"  it 
insisted  to  our  reluctant,  averted  minds,  "  still  don't  go 
down  to  the  essential  things.  .  .  ." 


376      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

We  have  to  go  deeper,  or  our  inadequate  children's 
insufficient  children  will  starve  amidst  harvests  of  ear- 
less futility.  That  conservatism  which  works  in  every 
class  to  preserve  in  its  essentials  the  habitual  daily  life 
is  all  against  a  profounder  treatment  of  political  issues. 
The  politician,  almost  as  absurdly  as  the  philosopher, 
tends  constantly,  in  spite  of  magnificent  preludes,  vast 
intimations,  to  specialise  himself  out  of  the  reality  he 
has  so  stupendously  summoned — he  bolts  back  to  lit- 
tleness. The  world  has  to  be  moulded  anew,  he  con- 
tinues to  admit,  but  without,  he  adds,  any  risk  of  up- 
setting his  week-end  visits,  his  morning  cup  of  tea.  .  .  . 

The  discussion  of  the  relations  of  men  and  women 
disturbs  every  one.  It  reacts  upon  the  private  life  of 
every  one  who  attempts  it.  And  at  any  particular  time 
only  a  small  minority  have  a  personal  interest  in  chang- 
ing the  established  state  of  affairs.  Habit  and  inter- 
est are  in  a  constantly  recruited  majority  against  con- 
scious change  and  adjustment  in  these  matters.  Drift 
rules  us.  The  great  mass  of  people,  and  an  overwhelm- 
ing proportion  of  influential  people,  are  people  who 
have  banished  their  dreams  and  made  their  compromise. 
Wonderful  and  beautiful  possibilities  are  no  longer  to 
be  thought  about.  They  have  given  up  any  aspira- 
tions for  intense  love,  their  splendid  offspring,  for  keen 
delights,  have  accepted  a  cultivated  kindliness  and  an 
uncritical  sense  of  righteousness  as  their  compensation. 
It's  a  settled  affair  with  them,  a  settled,  dangerous  af- 
fair. Most  of  them  fear,  and  many  hate,  the  slightest 
reminder  of  those  abandoned  dreams.  As  Dayton  once 
said  to  the  Pentagram  Circle,  when  we  were  discussing 
the  problem  of  a  universal  marriage  and  divorce  law 
throughout  the  Empire,  "  I  am  for  leaving  all  these 
things  alone."  And  then,  with  a  groan  in  his  voice, 
"  Leave  them  alone !  Leave  them  all  alone !  " 

That  was  his  whole  speech  for  the  evening,  in  a  note 


THE     BESETTING    OF     SEX     377 

of  suppressed  passion,  and  presently,  against  all  our 
etiquette,  he  got  up  and  went  out. 

For  some  years  after  my  marriage,  I  too  was  for 
leaving  them  alone.  I  developed  a  dread  and  dislike 
for  romance,  for  emotional  music,  for  the  human  figure 
in  art — turning  my  heart  to  landscape.  I  wanted  to 
sneer  at  lovers  and  their  ecstasies,  and  was  uncomfort- 
able until  I  found  the  effective  sneer.  In  matters  of 
private  morals  these  were  my  most  uncharitable  years. 
I  didn't  want  to  think  of  these  things  any  more  for 
ever.  I  hated  the  people  whose  talk  or  practice  showed 
they  were  not  of  my  opinion.  I  wanted  to  believe  that 
their  views  were  immoral  and  objectionable  and  con- 
temptible, because  I  had  decided  to  treat  them  as  at 
that  level.  I  was,  in  fact,  falling  into  the  attitude  of 
the  normal  decent  man. 

And  yet  one  cannot  help  thinking!  The  sensible 
moralised  man  finds  it  hard  to  escape  the  stream  of 
suggestion  that  there  are  still  dreams  beyond 
these  commonplace  acquiescences, — the  appeal  of 
beauty  suddenly  shining  upon  one,  the  mothlike 
stirrings  of  serene  summer  nights,  the  sweetness  of 
distant  music.  .  .  . 

It  is  one  of  the  paradoxical  factors  in  our  public 
life  at  the  present  time,  which  penalises  abandonment 
to  love  so  abundantly  and  so  heavily,  that  power,  in- 
fluence and  control  fall  largely  to  unencumbered  peo- 
ple and  sterile  people  and  people  who  have  married  for 
passionless  purposes,  people  whose  very  deficiency  in 
feeling  has  left  them  free  to  follow  ambition,  people 
beautyblind,  who  don't  understand  what  it  is  to  fall 
in  love,  what  it  is  to  desire  children  or  have  them,  what 
it  is  to  feel  in  their  blood  and  bodies  the  supreme  claim 
of  good  births  and  selective  births  above  all  other  af- 
fairs in  life,  people  almost  of  necessity  averse  from  this 
most  fundamental  aspect  of  existence.  .  .  . 


378      THE  NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

§« 

It  wasn't,  however,  my  deepening  sympathy  with 
and  understanding  of  the  position  of  women  in  general, 
or  the  change  in  my  ideas  about  all  these  intimate  things 
my  fast  friendship  with  Isabel  was  bringing  about, 
that  led  me  to  the  heretical  views  I  have  in  the  last  five 
years  dragged  from  the  region  of  academic  and  timid 
discussion  into  the  field  of  practical  politics.  Those 
influences,  no  doubt,  have  converged  to  the  same  end, 
and  given  me  a  powerful  emotional  push  upon  my  road, 
but  it  was  a  broader  and  colder  view  of  things  that  first 
determined  me  in  my  attempt  to  graft  the  Endowment 
of  Motherhood  in  some  form  or  other  upon  British  Im- 
perialism. Now  that  I  am  exiled  from  the  political 
world,  it  is  possible  to  estimate  just  how  effectually  that 
grafting  has  been  done. 

I  have  explained  how  the  ideas  of  a  trained  aristoc- 
racy and  a  universal  education  grew  to  paramount  im- 
portance in  my  political  scheme.  It  is  but  a  short  step 
from  this  to  the  question  of  the  quantity  and  quality  of 
births  in  the  community,  and  from  that  again  to  these 
forbidden  and  fear-beset  topics  of  marriage,  divorce, 
and  the  family  organisation.  A  sporadic  discussion  of 
these  aspects  had  been  going  on  for  years,  a  Eugenic 
society  existed,  and  articles  on  the  Falling  Birth  Rate, 
and  the  Rapid  Multiplication  of  the  Unfit  were  staples 
of  the  monthly  magazines.  But  beyond  an  intermit- 
tent scolding  of  prosperous  childless  people  in  general 
— one  never  addressed  them  in  particular — nothing  was 
done  towards  arresting  those  adverse  processes.  Al- 
most against  my  natural  inclination,  I  found  myself 
forced  to  go  into  these  things.  I  came  to  the  con- 
clusion that  under  modern  conditions  the  isolated 
private  family,  based  on  the  existing  marriage  contract, 
was  failing  in  its  work.  It  wasn't  producing  enough 


THE     BESETTING     OF     SEX     379 

children,  and  children  good  enough  and  well  trained 
enough  for  the  demands  of  the  developing  civilised 
state.  Our  civilisation  was  growing  outwardly,  and  de- 
caying in  its  intimate  substance,  and  unless  it  was  pres- 
ently to  collapse,  some  very  extensive  and  courageous 
reorganisation  was  needed.  The  old  haphazard  system 
of  pairing,  qualified  more  and  more  by  worldly  discre- 
tions, no  longer  secures  a  young  population  numerous 
enough  or  good  enough  for  the  growing  needs  and  pos- 
sibilities of  our  Empire.  Statecraft  sits  weaving 
splendid  garments,  no  doubt,  but  with  a  puny,  ugly, 
insufficient  baby  in  the  cradle. 

No  one  so  far  has  dared  to  take  up  this  problem  as 
a  present  question  for  statecraft,  but  it  comes  unher- 
alded, unadvocated,  and  sits  at  every  legislative  board. 
Every  improvement  is  provisional  except  the  improve- 
ment of  the  race,  and  it  became  more  and  more  doubt- 
ful to  me  if  we  were  improving  the  race  at  all !  Splen- 
did and  beautiful  and  courageous  people  must  come  to- 
gether and  have  children,  women  with  their  fine  senses 
and  glorious  devotion  must  be  freed  from  the  net  that 
compels  them  to  be  celibate,  compels  them  to  be  child- 
less and  useless,  or  to  bear  children  ignobly  to  men 
whom  need  and  ignorance  and  the  treacherous  pres- 
sure of  circumstances  have  forced  upon  them.  We  all 
know  that,  and  so  few  dare  even  to  whisper  it  for  fear 
that  they  should  seem,  in  seeking  to  save  the  family, 
to  threaten  its  existence.  It  is  as  if  a  party  of  pigmies 
in  a  not  too  capacious  room  had  been  joined  by  a  car- 
nivorous giant — and  decided  to  go  on  living  happily  by 
cutting  him  dead.  .  .  . 

The  problem  the  developing  civilised  state  has  to 
solve  is  how  it  can  get  the  best  possible  increase  under 
the  best  possible  conditions.  I  became  more  and  more 
convinced  that  the  independent  family  unit  of  to-day, 
in  which  the  man  is  master  of  the  wife  and  owner  of 


380      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

the  children,  in  which  all  are  dependent  upon  him,  sub- 
ordinated to  his  enterprises  and  liable  to  follow  his 
fortunes  up  or  down,  does  not  supply  anything  like  the 
best  conceivable  conditions.  We  want  to  modernise  the 
family  footing  altogether.  An  enormous  premium  both 
in  pleasure  and  competitive  efficiency  is  put  upon  volun- 
tary childlessness,  and  enormous  inducements  are  held 
out  to  women  to  subordinate  instinctive  and  selective 
preferences  to  social  and  material  considerations. 

The  practical  reaction  of  modern  conditions  upon  the 
old  tradition  of  the  family  is  this:  that  beneath  the 
pretence  that  nothing  is  changing,  secretly  and  with  all 
the  unwholesomeness  of  secrecy  everything  is  changed. 
Offspring  fall  away,  the  birth  rate  falls  and  falls  most 
among  just  the  most  efficient  and  active  and  best 
adapted  classes  in  the  community.  The  species  is  re- 
cruited from  among  its  failures  and  from  among  less 
civilised  aliens.  Contemporary  civilisations  are  in  ef- 
fect burning  the  best  of  their  possible  babies  in  the 
furnaces  that  run  the  machinery.  In  the  United 
States  the  native  Anlgo-American  strain  has  scarcely 
increased  at  all  since  1830,  and  in  most  Western  Euro- 
pean countries  the  same  is  probably  true  of  the  ablest 
and  most  energetic  elements  in  the  community.  The 
women  of  these  classes  still  remain  legally  and  prac- 
tically dependent  and  protected,  with  the  only  natural 
excuse  for  their  dependence  gone.  . 

The  modern  world  becomes  an  immense  spectacle  of 
unsatisfactory  groupings;  here  childless  couples  bored 
to  death  in  the  hopeless  effort  to  sustain  an  incessant 
honeymoon,  here  homes  in  which  a  solitary  child  grows 
unsocially,  here  small  two  or  three-child  homes  that  do 
no  more  than  continue  the  culture  of  the  parents  at  a 
great  social  cost,  here  numbers  of  unhappy  educated 
but  childless  married  women,  here  careless,  decivilised 
fecund  homes,  here  orphanages  and  asylums  for  the 


THE   BESETTING  OF    SEX        381 

heedlessly  begotten.  It  is  just  the  disorderly  prolifera- 
tion of  Brorastead  over  again,  in  lives  instead  of  in 
houses. 

What  is  the  good,  what  is  the  common  sense,  of  recti- 
fying boundaries,  pushing  research  and  discovery,  build- 
ing cities,  improving  all  the  facilities  of  life,  making 
great  fleets,  waging  wars,  while  this  aimless  decadence 
remains  the  quality  of  the  biological  outlook  ?  .  .  . 

It  is  difficult  now  to  trace  how  I  changed  from  my 
early  aversion  until  I  faced  this  mass  of  problems.  But 
so  far  back  as  1910  I  had  it  clear  in  my  mind  that  I 
would  rather  fail  utterly  than  participate  in  all  the 
surrenders  of  mind  and  body  that  are  implied  in  Day- 
ton's snarl  of  "  Leave  it  alone ;  leave  it  all  alone ! " 
Marriage  and  the  begetting  and  care  of  children,  is  the 
very  ground  substance  in  the  life  of  the  community. 
In  a  world  in  which  everything  changes,  in  which  fresh 
methods,  fresh  adjustments  and  fresh  ideas  perpetually 
renew  the  circumstances  of  life,  it  is  preposterous  that 
we  should  not  even  examine  into  these  matters,  should 
*est  content  to  be  ruled  by  the  uncriticised  traditions 
of  a  barbaric  age. 

Now,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  solution  of  this  prob- 
lem is  also  the  solution  of  the  woman's  individual  prob- 
lem. The  two  go  together,  are  right  and  left  of  one 
question.  The  only  conceivable  way  out  from  our 
impasse  lies  in  the  recognition  of  parentage,  that  is  to 
say  of  adequate  mothering,  as  no  longer  a  chance 
product  of  individual  passions  but  a  service  rendered 
to  the  State.  Women  must  become  less  and  less  sub- 
ordinated to  individual  men,  since  this  works  out  in  a 
more  or  less  complete  limitation,  waste,  and  sterilisa- 
tion of  their  essentially  social  function;  they  must  be- 
come more  and  more  subordinated  as  individually  in- 
dependent citizens  to  the  collective  purpose.  Or,  to 
express  the  thing  by  a  familiar  phrase,  the  highly  or- 


382      THE    NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

ganised,  scientific  state  we  desire  must,  if  it  is  to  exist 
at  all,  base  itself  not  upon  the  irresponsible  man-ruled 
family,  but  upon  the  matriarchal  family,  the  citizen- 
ship and  freedom  of  women  and  the  public  endowment 
of  motherhood. 

After  two  generations  of  confused  and  experimental 
revolt  it  grows  clear  to  modern  women  that  a  conscious, 
deliberate  motherhood  and  mothering  is  their  special 
function  in  the  State,  and  that  a  personal  subordina- 
tion to  an  individual  man  with  an  unlimited  power  of 
control  over  this  intimate  and  supreme  duty  is  a  deg- 
radation. No  contemporary  woman  of  education  put 
to  the  test  is  willing  to  recognise  any  claim  a  man  can 
make  upon  her  but  the  claim  of  her  freely-given  devo- 
tion to  him.  She  wants  the  reality  of  her  choice  and 
she  means  "  family  "  while  a  man  too  often  means  only 
possession.  This  alters  the  spirit  of  the  family  rela- 
tionships fundamentally.  Their  form  remains  just 
what  it  was  when  woman  was  esteemed  a  pretty,  de- 
sirable, and  incidentally  a  child-producing,  chattel. 
Against  these  time-honoured  ideas  the  new  spirit  of 
womanhood  struggles  in  shame,  astonishment,  bitter- 
ness, and  tears.  .  .  . 

I  confess  myself  altogether  feminist.  I  have  no 
doubts  in  the  matter.  I  want  this  coddling  and  brow- 
beating of  women  to  cease.  I  want  to  see  women  come 
in,  free  and  fearless,  to  a  full  participation  in  the  col- 
lective purpose  of  mankind.  Women,  I  am  convinced, 
are  as  fine  as  men;  they  can  be  as  wise  as  men;  they 
are  capable  of  far  greater  devotion  than  men.  I  want 
to  see  them  citizens,  with  a  marriage  law  framed  primar- 
ily for  them  and  for  their  protection  and  the  good  of 
the  race,  and  not  for  men's  satisfactions.  I  want  to 
see  them  bearing  and  rearing  good  children  in  the 
State  as  a  generously  rewarded  public  duty  and  service, 
choosing  their  husbands  freely  and  discerningly,  and 


THE   BESETTING   OF   SEX      383 

in  no  way  enslaved  by  or  subordinated  to  the  men  they 
have  chosen.  The  social  consciousness  of  women  seems 
to  me  an  unworked,  an  almost  untouched  mine  of 
wealth  for  the  constructive  purpose  of  the  world.  I 
want  to  change  the  respective  values  of  the  family 
group  altogether,  and  make  the  home  indeed  the 
women's  kingdom  and  the  mother  the  owner  and  re- 
sponsible guardian  of  her  children. 

It  is  no  use  pretending  that  this  is  not  novel  and 
revolutionary;  it  is.  The  Endowment  of  Motherhood 
implies  a  new  method  of  social  organization,  a  rear- 
rangement of  the  social  unit,  untried  in  human  experi- 
ence— as  untried  as  electric  traction  was  or  flying  in 
1800.  Of  course,  it  may  work  out  to  modify  men's 
ideas  of  marriage  profoundly.  To  me  that  is  a  sec- 
ondary consideration.  I  do  not  believe  that  particular 
assertion  myself,  because  I  am  convinced  that  a  prac- 
tical monogamy  is  a  psychological  necessity  to  the  mass 
of  civilised  people.  But  even  if  I  did  believe  it  I 
should  still  keep  to  my  present  line,  because  it  is  the 
only  line  that  will  prevent  a  highly  organised  civilisa- 
tion from  ending  in  biological  decay.  The  public  En- 
dowment of  Motherhood  is  the  only  possible  way  which 
will  ensure  the  permanently  developing  civilised  state 
at  which  all  constructive  minds  are  aiming.  A  point  is 
reached  in  the  life-history  of  a  civilisation  when  either 
this  reconstruction  must  be  effected  or  the  quality  and 
morale  of  the  population  prove  insufficient  for  the  needs 
of  the  developing  organisation.  It  is  not  so  nnich 
moral  decadence  that  will  destroy  us  as  moral  inadapta- 
bility. The  old  code  fails  under  the  new  needs.  The 
only  alternative  to  this  profound  reconstruction  is  a 
decay  in  human  quality  and  social  collapse.  Either 
this  unprecedented  rearrangement  must  be  achieved  by 
our  civilisation,  or  it  must  presently  come  upon  a  phase 
of  disorder  and  crumble  and  perish,  as  Rome  perished, 


384      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

as  France  declines,  as  the  strain  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
dwindles  out  of  America.  Whatever  hope  there  may 
be  in  the  attempt  therefore,  there  is  no  alternative  to 
the  attempt. 

§  6 

I  wanted  political  success  now  dearly  enough,  but 
not  at  the  price  of  constructive  realities.  These  ques- 
tions were  no  doubt  monstrously  dangerous  in  the  po- 
litical world;  there  wasn't  a  politician  alive  who  didn't 
look  scared  at  the  mention  of  "  The  Family/'  but  if 
raising  these  issues  were  essential  to  the  social  recon- 
structions on  which  my  life  was  set,  that  did  not  mat- 
ter. It  only  implied  that  I  should  take  them  up  with 
deliberate  caution.  There  was  no  release  because  of 
risk  or  difficulty. 

The  question  of  whether  I  should  commit  myself  to 
some  open  project  in  this  direction  was  going  on  in  my 
mind  concurrently  with  my  speculations  about  a  change 
of  party,  like  bass  and  treble  in  a  complex  piece  of 
music.  The  two  drew  to  a  conclusion  together.  I 
would  not  only  go  over  to  Imperialism,  but  I  would  at- 
tempt to  biologise  Imperialism. 

I  thought  at  first  that  I  was  undertaking  a  monstrous 
uphill  task.  But  as  I  came  to  look  into  the  possibilities 
of  the  matter,  a  strong  persuasion  grew  up  in  my  mind 
that  this  panic  fear  of  legislative  proposals  affecting 
the  family  basis  was  excessive,  that  things  were  much 
riper  for  development  in  this  direction  than  old-experi- 
enced people  out  of  touch  with  the  younger  generation 
imagined,  that  to  phrase  the  thing  in  a  parliamentary 
fashion,  "  something  might  be  done  in  the  constitu- 
encies "  with  the  Endowment  of  Motherhood  forthwith, 
provided  only  that  it  was  made  perfectly  clear  that 
anything  a  sane  person  could  possibly  intend  by  "  moral- 
ity "  was  left  untouched  by  these  proposals. 


THE   BESETTING  OF    SEX        385 

I  went  to  work  very  carefully.  I  got  Roper  of  the 
Daily  Telephone  and  Burkett  of  the  Dial  to  try  over  a 
silly-season  discussion  of  State  Help  for  Mothers,  and 
I  put  a  series  of  articles  on  eugenics,  upon  the  fall  in 
the  birth-rate,  and  similar  topics  in  the  Blue  Weekly, 
leading  up  to  a  tentative  and  generalised  advocacy  of 
the  public  endowment  of  the  nation's  children.  I  was 
more  and  more  struck  by  the  acceptance  won  by  a  sober 
and  restrained  presentation  of  this  suggestion. 

And  then,  in  the  fourth  year  of  the  Blue  Weekly's 
career,  came  the  Handitch  election,  and  I  was  forced 
by  the  clamour  of  my  antagonist,  and  very  willingly 
forced,  to  put  my  conviction:  to  the  test.  I  returned 
triumphantly  to  Westminster  with  the  Public  Endow- 
ment of  Motherhood  .is  part  of  my  open  profession  and 
with  the  full  approval  of  the  party  press.  Applauding 
benches  of  Imperialists  cheered  me  on  my  way  to  the 
table  between  the  whips. 

That  second  time  I  took  the  oath  I  was  not  one  of  a 
crowd  of  new  members,  but  salient,  an  event,  a  symbol 
of  profound  changes  and  new  purposes  in  the  national 
life. 

Here  it  is  my  political  book  comes  to  an  end,  and  in 
a  sense  my  book  ends  altogether.  For  the  rest  is  but 
to  tell  how  I  was  swept  out  of  this  great  world  of  po- 
litical possibilities.  I  close  this  Third  Book  as  I  opened 
it,  with  an  admission  of  difficulties  and  complexities, 
but  now  with  a  pile  of  manuscript  before  me  I  have  to 
confess  them  unsurmounted  and  still  entangled. 

Yet  my  aim  was  a  final  simplicity.  I  have  sought 
to  show  my  growing  realisation  that  the  essential  qual- 
ity of  all  political  and  social  effort  is  the  development 
of  a  great  race  mind  behind  the  interplay  of  individual 
lives.  That  is  the  collective  human  reality,  the  basis 
of  morality,  the  purpose  of  devotion.  To  that  our  lives 


386      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

must  be  given,  from  that  will  come  the  perpetual  fresh 
release  and  further  ennoblement  of  individual  lives.  .  .  . 

I  have  wanted  to  make  that  idea  of  a  collective  mind 
play  in  this  book  the  part  United  Italy  plays  in  Machi- 
avelli's  Prince.  I  have  called  it  the  hinterland  of  real- 
ity, shown  it  accumulating  a  dominating  truth  and 
tightness  which  must  force  men's  now  sporadic  motives 
more  and  more  into  a  disciplined  and  understanding 
relation  to  a  plan.  And  I  have  tried  to  indicate  how  I 
sought  to  serve  this  great  clarification  of  our  con- 
fusions. .  .  . 

Now  I  come  back  to  personality  and  the  story  of  my 
self -betrayal,  and  how  it  is  I  have  had  to  leave  all  that 
far-reaching  scheme  of  mine,  a  mere  project  and  be- 
ginning for  other  men  to  take  or  leave  as  it  pleases 
them. 


BOOK   THE    FOURTH 
ISABEL 


CHAPTER    THE    FIRST 

LOVE  AND    SUCCESS 


I  COME  to  the  most  evasive  and  difficult  part  of  my 
story,  which  is  to  tell  how  Isabel  and  I  have  made  a 
common  wreck  of  our  joint  lives. 

It  is  not  the  telling  of  one  simple  disastrous  acci- 
dent. There  was  a  vein  in  our  natures  that  led  to  this 
collapse,  gradually  and  at  this  point  and  that  it  crept 
to  the  surface.  One  may  indeed  see  our  destruction — 
for  indeed  politically  we  could  not  be  more  extinct  if 
we  had  been  shot  dead — in  the  form  of  a  catastrophe 
as  disconnected  and  conclusive  as  a  meteoric  stone  fall- 
ing out  of  heaven  upon  two  friends  and  crushing  them 
both.  But  I  do  not  think  that  is  true  to  our  situation 
or  ourselves.  We  were  not  taken  by  surprise.  The 
thing  was  in  us  and  not  from  without,  it  was  akin  to 
our  way  of  thinking  and  our  habitual  attitudes ;  it  had, 
for  all  its  impulsive  effect,  a  certain  necessity.  We 
might  have  escaped  no  doubt,  as  two  men  at  a  hundred 
yards  may  shoot  at  each  other  with  pistols  for  a  con- 
siderable time  and  escape.  But  it  isn't  particularly 
reasonable  to  talk  of  the  contrariety  of  fate  if  they 
both  get  hit. 

Isabel  and  I  were  dangerous  to  each  other  for  sev- 
eral years  of  friendship,  and  not  quite  unwittingly  so. 

In  writing  this,  moreover,  there  is  a  very  great  dif- 
ficulty in  steering  my  way  between  two  equally  unde- 
sirable tones  in  the  telling.  In  the  first  place  I  do 
not  want  to  seem  to  confess  my  sins  with  a  penitence 


390      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

I  am  very  doubtful  if  I  feel.  Now  that  I  have  got 
Isabel  we  can  no  doubt  count  the  cost  of  it  and  feel 
unquenchable  regrets,  but  I  am  not  sure  whether,  if  we 
could  be  put  back  now  into  such  circumstances  as  we 
were  in  a  year  ago,  or  two  years  ago,  whether  with  my 
eyes  fully  open  I  should  not  do  over  again  very  much 
as  I  did.  And  on  the  other  hand  I  do  not  want  to 
justify  the  things  we  have  done.  We  are  two  bad  peo- 
ple— if  there  is  to  be  any  classification  of  good  and  bad 
at  all,  we  have  acted  badly,  and  quite  apart  from  any 
other  considerations  we've  largely  wasted  our  own  very 
great  possibilities.  But  it  is  part  of  a  queer  humour 
that  underlies  all  this,  that  I  find  myself  slipping  again 
and  again  into  a  sentimental  treatment  of  our  case  that 
is  as  unpremeditated  as  it  is  insincere.  When  I  am  a 
little  tired  after  a  morning's  writing  I  find  the  faint 
suggestion  getting  into  every  other  sentence  that  our 
blunders  and  misdeeds  embodied,  after  the  fashion  of 
the  prophet  Hosea,  profound  moral  truths.  Indeed, 
I  feel  so  little  confidence  in  my  ability  to  keep  this  al- 
together out  of  my  book  that  I  warn  the  reader  here 
that  in  spite  of  anything  he  may  read  elsewhere  in  the 
story,  intimating  however  shyly  an  esoteric  and  exalted 
virtue  in  our  proceedings,  the  plain  truth  of  this  busi- 
ness is  that  Isabel  and  I  wanted  each  other  with  a  want 
entirely  formless,  inconsiderate,  and  overwhelming. 
And  though  I  could  tell  you  countless  delightful  and 
beautiful  things  about  Isabel,  were  this  a  book  in  her 
praise,  I  cannot  either  analyse  that  want  or  account 
for  its  extreme  intensity. 

I  will  confess  that  deep  in  my  mind  there  is  a  belief 
in  a  sort  of  wild  Tightness  about  any  love  that  is  fraught 
with  beauty,  but  that  eludes  me  and  vanishes  again,  and 
is  not,  I  feel,  to  be  put  with  the  real  veracities  and 
righteousnesses  and  virtues  in  the  paddocks  and 
menageries  of  human  reason.  .  .  . 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        391 

We  have  already  a  child,  and  Margaret  was  child- 
less, and  I  find  myself  prone  to  insist  upon  that,  as  if 
it  was  a  justification.  But,  indeed,  when  we  became 
lovers  there  was  small  thought  of  Eugenics  between  us. 
Ours  was  a  mutual  and  not  a  philoprogenitive  passion. 
Old  Nature  behind  us  may  have  had  such  purposes  with 
us,  but  it  is  not  for  us  to  annex  her  intentions  by  a 
moralising  afterthought.  There  isn't,  in  fact,  any  de- 
cent justification  for  us  whatever — at  that  the  story 
must  stand. 

But  if  there  is  no  justification  there  is  at  least  a  very 
effective  excuse  in  the  mental  confusedness  of  our  time. 
The  evasion  of  that  passionately  thorough  exposition 
of  belief  and  of  the  grounds  of  morality,  which  is  the 
outcome  of  the  mercenary  religious  compromises  of  the 
late  Vatican  period,  the  stupid  suppression  of  anything 
but  the  most  timid  discussion  of  sexual  morality  in  our 
literature  and  drama,  the  pervading  cultivated  and  pro- 
tected muddle-headedness,  leaves  mentally  vigorous  peo- 
ple with  relatively  enormous  possibilities  of  destruction 
and  little  effective  help.  They  find  themselves  con- 
fronted by  the  habits  and  prejudices  of  manifestly  com- 
monplace people,  and  by  that  extraordinary  patched-up 
Christianity,  the  cult  of  a  "  Bromsteadised  "  deity,  dif- 
fused, scattered,  and  aimless,  which  hides  from  exam- 
ination and  any  possibility  of  faith  behind  the  plea  of 
good  taste.  A  god  about  whom  there  is  delicacy  is  far 
worse  than  no  god  at  all.  We  are  forced  to  be  laws 
unto  ourselves  and  to  live  experimentally.  It  is  in- 
evitable that  a  considerable  fraction  of  just  that  bolder, 
more  initiatory  section  of  the  intellectual  community, 
the  section  that  can  least  be  spared  from  the  collective 
life  in  a  period  of  trial  and  change,  will  drift  into  such 
emotional  crises  and  such  disaster  as  overtook  us.  Most 
perhaps  will  escape,  but  many  will  go  down,  many  more 
than  the  world  can  spare.  It  is  the  unwritten  law  of 


392      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

all  our  public  life,  and  the  same  holds  true  of  America, 
that  an  honest  open  scandal  ends  a  career.  England 
in  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  has  wasted  half  a  dozen 
statesmen  on  this  score;  she  would,  I  believe,  reject 
Nelson  now  if  he  sought  to  serve  her.  Is  it  wonderful 
that  to  us  fretting  here  in  exile  this  should  seem  the 
cruellest  as  well  as  the  most  foolish  elimination  of  a 
necessary  social  element?  It  destroys  no  vice;  for  vice 
hides  by  nature.  It  not  only  rewards  dulness  as  if  it 
were  positive  virtue,  but  sets  an  enormous  premium 
upon  hypocrisy.  That  is  my  case,  and  that  is  why  I 
am  teling  this  side  of  my  story  with  so  much  explicit- 
ness. 


Ever  since  the  Kinghamstead  election  I  had  main- 
tained what  seemed  a  desultory  friendship  with  Isabel. 
At  first  it  was  rather  Isabel  kept  it  up  than  I.  When- 
ever Margaret  and  I  went  down  to  that  villa,  with  its 
three  or  four  acres  of  garden  and  shrubbery  about  it, 
which  fulfilled  our  election  promise  to  live  at  King- 
hamstead, Isabel  would  turn  up  in  a  state  of  frank 
cheerfulness,  rejoicing  at  us,  and  talk  all  she  was  read- 
ing and  thinking  to  me,  and  stay  for  all  the  rest  of  the 
day.  In  her  shameless  liking  for  me  she  was  as  nat- 
ural as  a  savage.  She  would  exercise  me  vigorously 
at  tennis,  while  Margaret  lay  and  rested  her  back  in 
the  afternoon,  or  guide  me  for  some  long  ramble  that 
dodged  the  suburban  and  congested  patches  of  the  con- 
stituency with  amazing  skill.  She  took  possession  of 
me  in  that  unabashed,  straight-minded  way  a  girl  will 
sometimes  adopt  with  a  man,  chose  my  path  or  criti- 
cised my  game  with  a  motherly  solicitude  for  my  wel- 
fare that  was  absurd  and  delightful.  And  we  talked, 
We  discussed  and  criticised  the  stories  of  novels,  scraps 
of  history,  pictures,  social  questions,  socialism,  the  pol- 


LOVE     AND     SUCCESS        393 

icy  of  the  Government.  She  was  young  and  most  un- 
evenly informed,  but  she  was  amazingly  sharp  and 
quick  and  good.  Never  before  in  my  life  had  I  known 
a  girl  of  her  age,  or  a  woman  of  her  quality.  I  had 
never  dreamt  there  was  such  talk  in  the  world.  King- 
hamstead  became  a  lightless  place  when  she  went  to 
Oxford.  Heaven  knows  how  much  that  may  not  have 
precipitated  my  abandonment  of  the  seat! 

She  went  to  Ridout  College,  Oxford,  and  that  cer- 
tainly weighed  with  me  when  presently  after  my  breach 
with  the  Liberals  various  little  undergraduate  societies 
began  to  ask  for  lectures  and  discussions.  I  favoured 
Oxford.  I  declared  openly  I  did  so  because  of  her. 
At  that  time  I  think  we  neither  of  us  suspected  the  pos- 
sibility of  passion  that  lay  like  a  coiled  snake  in  the 
path  before  us.  It  seemed  to  us  that  we  had  the 
quaintest,  most  delightful  friendship  in  the  world;  she 
was  my  pupil,  and  I  was  her  guide,  philosopher,  and 
friend.  People  smiled  indulgently — even  Margaret 
smiled  indulgently — at  our  attraction  for  one  another. 

Such  friendships  are  not  uncommon  nowadays — 
among  easy-going,  liberal-minded  people.  For  the 
most  part,  there's  no  sort  of  harm,  as  people  say,  in 
them.  The  two  persons  concerned  are  never  supposed 
to  think  of  the  passionate  love  that  hovers  so  close  to 
the  friendship,  or  if  they  do,  then  they  banish  the 
thought.  I  think  we  kept  the  thought  as  permanently 
in  exile  as  any  one  could  do.  If  it  did  in  odd  moments 
come  into  our  heads  we  pretended  elaborately  it  wasn't 
there. 

Only  we  were  both  very  easily  jealous  of  each  other's 
attention,  and  tremendously  insistent  upon  each  other's 
preference. 

I  remember  once  during  the  Oxford  days  an  inti- 
mation that  should  have  set  me  thinking,  and  I  suppose 
discreetly  disentangling  myself.  It  was  one  Sunday 


394      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

afternoon,  and  it  must  have  been  about  May,  for  the 
trees  and  shrubs  of  Ridout  College  were  gay  with  blos- 
som, and  fresh  with  the  new  sharp  greens  of  spring. 
I  had  walked  talking  with  Isabel  and  a  couple  of  other 
girls  through  the  wide  gardens  of  the  place,  seen  and 
criticised  the  new  brick  pond,  nodded  to  the  daughter 
of  this  friend  and  that  in  the  hammocks  under  the  trees, 
and  picked  a  way  among  the  scattered  tea-parties  on 
the  lawn  to  our  own  circle  on  the  grass  under  a  Siberian 
crab  near  the  great  bay  window.  There  I  sat  and  ate 
great  quantities  of  cake,  and  discussed  the  tactics  of 
the  Suffragettes.  I  had  made  some  comments  upon  the 
spirit  of  the  movement  in  an  address  to  the  men  in  Pem- 
broke, and  it  had  got  abroad,  and  a  group  of  girls  and 
women  dons  were  now  having  it  out  with  me. 

I  forget  the  drift  of  the  conversation,  or  what  it  was 
made  Isabel  interrupt  me.  She  did  interrupt  me.  She 
had  been  lying  prone  on  the  ground  at  my  right  hand, 
chin  on  fists,  listening  thoughtfully,  and  I  was  sitting 
beside  old  Lady  Evershead  on  a  garden  seat.  I  turned 
to  Isabel's  voice,  and  saw  her  face  uplifted,  and  her 
dear  cheeks  and  nose  and  forehead  all  splashed  and 
barred  with  sunlight  and  the  shadows  of  the  twigs  of 
the  trees  behind  me.  And  something — an  infinite  ten- 
derness, stabbed  me.  It  was  a  keen  physical  feeling, 
like  nothing  I  had  ever  felt  before.  It  had  a  quality 
of  tears  in  it.  For  the  first  time  in  my  narrow  and 
concentrated  life  another  human  being  had  really  thrust 
into  my  being  and  gripped  my  very  heart. 

Our  eyes  met  perplexed  for  an  extraordinary  moment. 
Then  I  turned  back  and  addressed  myself  a  little  stiffly 
to  the  substance  of  her  intervention.  For  some  time  I 
couldn't  look  at  her  again. 

From  that  time  forth  I  knew  I  loved  Isabel  beyond 
measure. 

Yet  it  is  curious  that  it  never  occurred  to  me  for  a 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        395 

year  or  so  that  this  was  likely  to  be  a  matter  of  passion 
between  us.  I  have  told  how  definitely  I  put  my  imag- 
ination into  harness  in  those  matters  at  my  marriage, 
and  I  was  living  now  in  a  world  of  big  interests,  where 
there  is  neither  much  time  nor  inclination  for  deliberate 
love-making.  I  suppose  there  is  a  large  class  of  men 
who  never  meet  a  girl  or  a  woman  without  thinking  of 
sex,  who  meet  a  friend's  daughter  and  decide:  "  Mustn't 
get  friendly  with  her — wouldn't  do"  and  set  invisible 
bars  between  themselves  and  all  the  wives  in  the  world. 
Perhaps  that  is  the  way  to  live.  Perhaps  there  is  no 
other  method  than  this  effectual  annihilation  of  half — • 
and  the  most  sympathetic  and  attractive  half — of  the 
human  beings  in  the  world,  so  far  as  any  frank  inter- 
course is  concerned.  I  am  quite  convinced  anyhow  that 
such  a  qualified  intimacy  as  ours,  such  a  drifting  into 
the  sense  of  possession,  such  untrammeled  conversation 
with  an  invisible,  implacable  limit  set  just  where  the 
intimacy  glows,  it  is  no  kind  of  tolerable  compromise.  If 
men  and  women  are  to  go  so  far  together,  they  must 
be  free  to  go  as  far  as  they  may  want  to  go,  without 
the  vindictive  destruction  that  has  come  upon  us.  On 
the  basis  of  the  accepted  codes  the  jealous  people  are 
right,  and  the  liberal-minded  ones  are  playing  with 
fire.  If  people  are  not  to  love,  then  they  must  be  kept 
apart.  If  they  are  not  to  be  kept  apart,  then  we  must 
prepare  for  an  unprecedented  toleration  of  lovers. 

Isabel  was  as  unforeseeing  as  I  to  begin  with,  but  sex 
marches  into  the  life  of  an  intelligent  girl  with  demands 
and  challenges  far  more  urgent  than  the  mere  call  of 
curiosity  and  satiable  desire  that  comes  to  a  young  man. 
No  woman  yet  has  dared  to  tell  the  story  of  that  un- 
folding. She  attracted  men,  and  she  encouraged  them, 
and  watched  them,  and  tested  them,  and  dismissed  them, 
and  concealed  the  substance  of  her  thoughts  about  them 
in  the  way  that  seems  instinctive  in  a  natural-minded 


396      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

girl.  There  was  even  an  engagement — amidst  the  pro* 
tests  and  disapproval  of  the  college  authorities.  I 
never  saw  the  man,  though  she  gave  me  a  long  history 
of  the  affair,  to  which  I  listened  with  a  forced  and  in- 
sincere sympathy.  She  struck  me  oddly  as  taking  the 
relationship  for  a  thing  in  itself,  and  regardless  of  its 
consequences.  After  a  time  she  became  silent  about 
him,  and  then  threw  him  over ;  and  by  that  time,  I  think, 
for  all  that  she  was  so  much  my  junior,  she  knew  more 
about  herself  and  me  than  I  was  to  know  for  several 
years  to  come. 

We  didn't  see  each  other  for  some  months  after  my 
resignation,  but  we  kept  up  a  frequent  correspondence. 
She  said  twice  over  that  she  wanted  to  talk  to  me,  that 
letters  didn't  convey  what  one  wanted  to  say,  and  I  went 
up  to  Oxford  pretty  definitely  to  see  her — though  I 
combined  it  with  one  or  two  other  engagements — some- 
where in  February.  Insensibly  she  had  become  im- 
portant enough  for  me  to  make  journeys  for  her. 

But  we  didn't  see  very  much  of  one  another  on  that 
occasion.  There  was  something  in  the  air  between  us 
that  made  a  faint  embarrassment;  the  mere  fact,  per- 
haps, that  she  had  asked  me  to  come  up. 

A  year  before  she  would  have  dashed  off  with  me 
quite  unscrupulously  to  talk  alone,  carried  me  off  to 
her  room  for  an  hour  with  a  minute  of  chaperonage  to 
satisy  the  rules.  Now  there  was  always  some  one  or 
other  near  us  that  it  seemed  impossible  to  exorcise. 

We  went  for  a  walk  on  the  Sunday  afternoon  with 
old  Fortescue,  K.  C.,  who'd  come  up  to  see  his  two 
daughters,  both  great  friends  of  Isabel's,  and  some 
mute  inglorious  don  whose  name  I  forget,  but  who  was 
in  a  state  of  marked  admiration  for  her.  The  six  of  us 
played  a  game  of  conversational  entanglements  through- 
out, and  mostly  I  was  impressing  the  Fortescue  girls 
with  the  want  of  mental  concentration  possible  in  a 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        397 

rising  politician.  We  went  down  Carfex,  I  remember, 
to  Folly  Bridge,  and  inspected  the  Barges,  and  then 
back  by  way  of  Merton  to  the  Botanic  Gardens  and 
Magdalen  Bridge.  And  in  the  Botanic  Gardens  she 
got  almost  her  only  chance  with  me. 

"  Last  months  at  Oxford,"  she  said. 

"And  then?"  I  asked. 

"  I'm  coming  to  London,"  she  said. 

"To  write?" 

She  was  silent  for  a  moment.  Then  she  said 
abruptly,  with  that  quick  flush  of  hers  and  a  sudden 
boldness  in  her  eyes:  "  I'm  going  to  work  with  you. 
Why  shouldn't  I?" 


Here,  again,,  I  suppose  I  had  a  fair  warning  of  the 
drift  of  things.  I  seem  to  remember  myself  in  the 
train  to  Paddington,  sitting  with  a  handful  of  papers  — 
galley  proofs  for  the  Blue  Weekly,  I  suppose  —  on  my 
lap,  and  thinking  about  her  and  that  last  sentence  of 
hers,  and  all  that  it  might  mean  to  me. 

It  is  very  hard  to  recall  even  the  main  outline  of 
anything  so  elusive  as  a  meditation.  I  know  that  the 
idea  of  working  with  her  gripped  me,  fascinated  me. 
That  my  value  in  her  life  seemed  growing  filled  me 
with  pride  and  a  kind  of  gratitude.  I  was  already  in 
no  doubt  that  her  value  in  my  life  was  tremendous.  It 
made  it  none  the  less,  that  in  those  days  I  was  obsessed 
by  the  idea  that  she  was  transitory,  and  bound  to  go 
out  of  my  life  again.  It  is  no  good  trying  to  set  too 
fine  a  face  upon  this  complex  business,  there  is  gold 
and  clay  and  sunlight  and  savagery  in  every  love  story, 
and  a  multitude  of  elvish  elements  peeped  out  beneath 
the  fine  rich  curtain  of  affection  that  masked  our  future. 
I've  never  properly  weighed  how  immensely  my  vanity 
was  gratified  by  her  clear  preference  for  me.  Nor  can 


398      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

I  for  a  moment  determine  how  much  deliberate  inten- 
tion I  hide  from  myself  in  this  affair. 

Certainly  I  think  some  part  of  me  must  have  been 
saying  in  the  train :  "  Leave  go  of  her.  Get  away  from 
her.  End  this  now."  I  can't  have  been  so  stupid  as 
not  to  have  had  that  in  my  mind.  .  .  . 

If  she  had  been  only  a  beautiful  girl  in  love  with 
me,  I  think  I  could  have  managed  the  situation.  Once 
or  twice  since  my  marriage  and  before  Isabel  became  of 
any  significance  in  my  life,  there  had  been  incidents 
with  other  people,  flashes  of  temptation — no  telling  is 
possible  of  the  thing  resisted.  I  think  that  mere  beauty 
and  passion  would  not  have  taken  me.  But  between 
myself  and  Isabel  things  were  incurably  complicated 
by  the  intellectual  sympathy  we  had,  the  jolly  march 
of  our  minds  together.  That  has  always  mattered 
enormously.  I  should  have  wanted  her  company  nearly 
as  badly  if  she  had  been  some  crippled  old  lady;  we 
would  have  hunted  shoulder  to  shoulder,  as  two  men. 
Only  two  men  would  never  have  had  the  patience  and 
readiness  for  one  another  we  two  had.  I  had  never 
for  years  met  any  one  with  whom  I  could  be  so  care- 
lessly sure  of  understanding  or  to  whom  I  could  listen 
so  easily  and  fully.  She  gave  me,  with  an  extraordi- 
nary completeness,  that  rare,  precious  effect  of  always 
saying  something  fresh,  and  yet  saying  it  so  that  it 
filled  into  and  folded  about  all  the  little  recesses  and 
corners  of  my  mind  with  an  infinite,  soft  familiarity. 
It  is  impossible  to  explain  that.  It  is  like  trying  to 
explain  why  her  voice,  her  voice  heard  speaking  to  any 
one — heard  speaking  in  another  room — pleased  my  ears. 

She  was  the  only  Oxford  woman  who  took  a  first 
that  year.  She  spent  the  summer  in  Scotland  and 
Yorkshire,  writing  to  me  continually  of  all  she  now 
meant  to  do,  and  stirring  my  imagination.  She  came 
to  London  for  the  autumn  session.  For  a  time  she 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        399 

stayed  with  old  Lady  Colbeck,  but  she  fell  out  with 
her  hostess  when  it  became  clear  she  wanted  to  write, 
not  novels,  but  journalism,  and  then  she  set  every  one 
talking  by  taking  a  flat  near  Victoria  and  installing 
as  her  sole  protector  an  elderly  German  governess  she 
had  engaged  through  a  scholastic  agency.  She  began 
writing,  not  in  that  copious  flood  the  undisciplined 
young  woman  of  gifts  is  apt  to  produce,  but  in  exactly 
the  manner  of  an  able  young  man,  experimenting  with 
forms,  developing  the  phrasing  of  opinions,  taking  a 
definite  line.  She  was,  of  course,  tremendously  dis- 
cussed. She  was  disapproved  of,  but  she  was  invited 
out  to  dinner.  She  got  rather  a  reputation  for  the 
management  of  elderly  distinguished  men.  It  was  an 
odd  experience  to  follow  Margaret's  soft  rustle  of  silk 
into  some  big  drawing-room  and  discover  my  snub- 
nosed  girl  in  the  blue  sack  transformed  into  a  shining 
creature  in  the  soft  splendour  of  pearls  and  ivory-white 
and  lace,  and  with  a  silver  band  about  her  dusky  hair. 

For  a  time  we  did  not  meet  very  frequently,  though 
always  she  professed  an  unblushing  preference  for  my 
company,  and  talked  my  views  and  sought  me  out. 
Then  her  usefulness  upon  the  Blue  Weekly  began  to 
link  us  closelier.  She  would  come  up  to  the  office,  and 
sit  by  the  window,  and  talk  over  the  proofs  of  the  next 
week's  articles,  going  through  my  intentions  with  a 
keen  investigatory  scalpel.  Her  talk  always  puts  me 
in  mind  of  a  steel  blade.  Her  writing  became  rapidly 
very  good ;  she  had  a  wit  and  a  turn  of  the  phrase  that 
was  all  her  own.  We  seemed  to  have  forgotten  the 
little  shadow  of  embarrassment  that  had  fallen  over 
our  last  meeting  at  Oxford.  Everything  seemed  natural 
and  easy  between  us  in  those  days;  a  little  unconven- 
tional, but  that  made  it  all  the  brighter. 

We  developed  something  like  a  custom  of  walks, 
about  once  a  week  or  so,  and  letters  and  notes  became 


400      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

frequent.  I  won't  pretend  things  were  not  keenly 
personal  between  us,  but  they  had  an  air  of  being  in- 
nocently mental.  She  used  to  call  me  "  Master  "  in 
our  talks,  a  monstrous  and  engaging  flattery,  and  I  was 
inordinately  proud  to  have  her  as  my  pupil.  Who 
wouldn't  have  been?  And  we  went  on  at  that  dis- 
tance for  a  long  time — until  within  a  year  of  the 
Handitch  election. 

After  Lady  Colbeck  threw  her  up  as  altogether  too 
"intellectual"  for  comfortable  control,  Isabel  was 
taken  up  by  the  Balfes  in  a  less  formal  and  compro- 
mising manner,  and  week-ended  with  them  and  their 
cousin  Leonora  Sparling,  and  spent  large  portions  of 
her  summer  with  them  in  Herefordshire.  There  was  a 
lover  or  so  in  that  time,  men  who  came  a  little  timidly 
at  this  brilliant  young  person  with  the  frank  manner 
and  the  Amazonian  mind,  and,  she  declared,  received 
her  kindly  refusals  with  manifest  relief.  And  Arnold 
Shoesmith  struck  up  a  sort  of  friendship  that  oddly 
imitated  mine.  She  took  a  liking  to  him  because  he 
•was  clumsy  and  shy  and  inexpressive;  she  embarked 
upon  the  dangerous  interest  of  helping  him  to  find  his 
soul.  I  had  some  twinges  of  jealousy  about  that.  I 
didn't  see  the  necessity  of  him.  He  invaded  her  time, 
and  I  thought  that  might  interfere  with  her  work.  If 
their  friendship  stole  some  hours  from  Isabel's  writing, 
it  did  not  for  a  long  while  interfere  with  our  walks  or 
our  talks,  or  the  close  intimacy  we  had  together. 

§  4 

Then  suddenly  Isabel  and  I  found  ourselves  passion- 
ately in  love. 

The  change  came  so  entirely  without  warning  or 
intention  that  I  find  it  impossible  now  to  tell  the  order 
of  its  phases.  What  disturbed  pebble  started  the  ava- 
lanche I  cannot  trace.  Perhaps  it  was  simply  that  the 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        401 

barriers  between  us  and  this  masked  aspect  of  life  had 
been  wearing  down  unperceived. 

And  there  came  a  change  in  Isabel.  It  was  like 
some  change  in  the  cycle  of  nature,  like  the  onset  of 
spring — a  sharp  brightness,  an  uneasiness.  She  became 
restless  with  her  work;  little  encounters  with  men 
began  to  happen,  encounters  not  quite  in  the  quality 
of  the  earlier  proposals;  and  then  came  an  odd  inci- 
dent of  which  she  told  me,  but  somehow,  I  felt,  didn't 
tell  me  completely.  She  told  me  all  she  was  able  to 
tell  me.  She  had  been  at  a  dance  at  the  Ropers', 
and  a  man,  rather  well  known  in  London,  had  kissed 
her.  The  thing  amazed  her  beyond  measure.  It  was 
the  sort  of  thing  immediately  possible  between  any 
man  and  any  woman,  that  one  never  expects  to  happen 
until  it  happens.  It  had  the  surprising  effect  of  a 
judge  generally  known  to  be  bald  suddenly  whipping 
off  his  wig  in  court.  No  absolutely  unexpected  reve- 
lation could  have  quite  the  same  quality  of  shock.  She 
went  through  the  whole  thing  to  me  with  a  remarkable 
detachment,  told  me  how  she  had  felt — and  the  odd 
things  it  seemed  to  open  to  her. 

"  I  want  to  be  kissed,  and  all  that  sort  of  thing/'  she 
avowed.  "  I  suppose  every  woman  does." 

She  added  after  a  pause :  "  And  I  don't  want  any 
one  to  do  it." 

This  struck  me  as  queerly  expressive  of  the  woman's 
attitude  to  these  things.  "  Some  one  presently  will — 
solve  that,"  I  said. 

"  Some  one  will  perhaps." 

I  was  silent. 

"  Some  one  will,"  she  said,  almost  viciously.  "  And 
then  we'll  have  to  stop  these  walks  and  talks  of  ours, 
dear  Master.  .  .  .  I'll  be  sorry  to  give  them  up." 

"  It's  part  of  the  requirements  of  the  situation,"  I 
said,  "that  he  should  be — oh,  very  interesting!  He'll 


402      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

start,  no  doubt,  all  sorts  of  new  topics,  and  open 
no  end  of  attractive  vistas.  .  .  .  You  can't,  you  know, 
always  go  about  in  a  state  of  pupillage." 

"  I  don't  think  I  can,"  said  Isabel.  "  But  it's  only 
just  recently  I've  begun  to  doubt  about  it." 

I  remember  these  things  being  said,  but  just  how 
much  we  saw  and  understood,  and  just  how  far  we  were 
really  keeping  opaque  to  each  other  then,  I  cannot 
remember.  But  it  must  have  been  quite  soon  after 
this  that  we  spent  nearly  a  whole  day  together  at  Kew 
Gardens,  with  the  curtains  up  and  the  barriers  down, 
and  the  thing  that  had  happened  plain  before  our  eyes. 
I  don't  remember  we  ever  made  any  declaration.  We 
just  assumed  the  new  footing.  .  .  . 

It  was  a  day  early  in  that  year — I  think  in  January, 
because  there  was  thin,  crisp  snow  on  the  grass,  and 
we  noted  that  only  two  other  people  had  been  to  the 
Pagoda  that  day.  I've  a  curious  impression  of  greenish 
colour,  hot,  moist  air  and  huge  palm  fronds  about  very 
much  of  our  talk,  as  though  we  were  nearly  all  the 
time  in  the  Tropical  House.  But  I  also  remember 
very  vividly  looking  at  certain  orange  and  red  spray- 
like  flowers  from  Patagonia,  which  could  not  have  been 
there.  It  is  a  curious  thing  that  I  do  not  remember 
we  made  any  profession  of  passionate  love  for  one 
another;  we  talked  as  though  the  fact  of  our  intense 
love  for  each  other  had  always  been  patent  between  us. 
There  was  so  long  and  frank  an  intimacy  between  us 
that  we  talked  far  more  like  brother  and  sister  or  hus- 
band and  wife  than  two  people  engaged  in  the  war  of 
the  sexes.  We  wanted  to  know  what  we  were  going  to 
do,  and  whatever  we  did  we  meant  to  do  in  the  most 
perfect  concert.  We  both  felt  an  extraordinary  acces- 
sion of  friendship  and  tenderness  then,  and,  what  again 
is  curious,  very  little  passion.  But  there  was  also,  in 
spite  of  the  perplexities  we  faced,  an  immense  satis- 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        403 

faction  about  that  day.  It  was  as  if  we  had  taken  off 
something  that  had  hindered  our  view  of  each  other, 
like  people  who  unvizard  to  talk  more  easily  at  a 
masked  ball. 

I've  had  since  to  view  our  relations  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  ordinary  observer.  I  find  that  vision  in 
the  most  preposterous  contrast  with  all  that  really 
went  on  between  us.  I  suppose  there  I  should  figure 
as  a  wicked  seducer,  while  an  unprotected  girl  suc- 
cumbed to  my  fascinations.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
didn't  occur  to  us  that  there  was  any  personal  inequality 
between  us.  I  knew  her  for  my  equal  mentally;  in  so 
many  things  she  was  beyond  comparison  cleverer  than 
I;  her  courage  outwent  mine.  The  quick  leap  of  her 
mind  evoked  a  flash  of  joy  in  mine  like  the  response  of 
an  induction  wire;  her  way  of  thinking  was  like  watch- 
ing sunlight  reflected  from  little  waves  upon  the  side 
of  a  boat,  it  was  so  bright,  so  mobile,  so  variously  and 
easily  true  to  its  law.  In  the  back  of  our  minds  we 
both  had  a  very  definite  belief  that  making  love  is  full 
of  joyous,  splendid,  tender,  and  exciting  possibilities, 
and  we  had  to  discuss  why  we  shouldn't  be  to  the  last 
degree  lovers. 

Now,  what  I  should  like  to  print  here,  if  it  were 
possible,  in  all  the  screaming  emphasis  of  red  ink,  is 
this:  that  the  circumstances  of  my  upbringing  and  the 
circumstances  of  Isabel's  upbringing  had  left  not  a 
shadow  of  belief  or  feeling  that  the  utmost  passionate 
love  between  us  was  in  itself  intrinsically  wrong.  I've 
told  with  the  fullest  particularity  just  all  that  I  was 
taught  or  found  out  for  myself  in  these  matters,  and 
Isabel's  reading  and  thinking,  and  the  fierce  silences  of 
her  governesses  and  the  breathless  warnings  of  teachers, 
and  all  the  social  and  religious  influences  that  had  been 
brought  to  bear  upon  her,  had  worked  out  to  the  same 
void  of  conviction.  The  code  had  failed  with  us  alto- 


404      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

gether.  We  didn't  for  a  moment  consider  anything 
but  the  expediency  of  what  we  both,  for  all  our  quiet 
faces  and  steady  eyes,  wanted  most  passionately  to  do. 

Well,  here  you  have  the  state  of  mind  of  whole  bri- 
gades of  people,  and  particularly  of  young  people, 
nowadays.  The  current  morality  hasn't  gripped  them; 
they  don't  really  believe  in  it  at  all.  They  may  render 
it  lip-service,  but  that  is  quite  another  thing.  There  are 
scarcely  any  tolerable  novels  to  justify  its  prohibitions; 
its  prohibitions  do,  in  fact,  remain  unjustified  amongst 
these  ugly  suppressions.  You  may,  if  you  choose, 
silence  the  admission  of  this  in  literature  and  current 
discussion;  you  will  not  prevent  it  working  out  in 
lives.  People  come  up  to  the  great  moments  of  passion 
crudely  unaware,  astoundingly  unprepared  as  no  really 
civilised  and  intelligently  planned  community  would 
let  any  one  be  unprepared.  They  find  themselves 
hedged  about  with  customs  that  have  no  organic  hold 
upon  them,  and  mere  discretions  all  generous  spirits 
are  disposed  to  despise. 

Consider  the  infinite  absurdities  of  it!  Multitudes 
of  us  are  trying  to  run  this  complex  modern  community 
on  a  basis  of  "  Hush  "  without  explaining  to  our  chil- 
dren or  discussing  with  them  anything  about  love  and 
marriage  at  all.  Doubt  and  knowledge  creep  about  in 
enforced  darknesses  and  silences.  We  are  living  upon 
an  ancient  tradition  which  everybody  doubts  and  no- 
body has  ever  analysed.  We  affect  a  tremendous  and 
cultivated  shyness  and  delicacy  about  imperatives  of  the 
most  arbitrary  appearance.  What  ensues?  What  did 
ensue  with  us,  for  example?  On  the  one  hand  was  a 
great  desire,  robbed  of  any  appearance  of  shame  and 
grossness  by  the  power  of  love,  and  on  the  other  hand, 
the  possible  jealousy  of  so  and  so,  the  disapproval  of  so 
and  so,  material  risks  and  dangers.  It  is  only  in  tho 
retrospect  that  we  have  been  able  to  grasp  something 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        405 

of  the  effectual  case  against  us.  The  social  prohibition 
lit  by  the  intense  glow  of  our  passion,  presented  itself 
as  preposterous,  irrational,  arbitrary,  and  ugly,  a 
monster  fit  only  for  mockery.  We  might  be  ruined! 
Well,  there  is  a  phase  in  every  love  affair,  a  sort  of 
heroic  hysteria,  when  death  and  ruin  are  agreeable  ad- 
ditions to  the  prospect.  It  gives  the  business  a  gravity, 
a  solemnity.  Timid  people  may  hesitate  and  draw  back 
with  a  vague  instinctive  terror  of  the  immensity  of  the 
oppositions  they  challenge,  but  neither  Isabel  nor  I  are 
timid  people. 

We  weighed  what  was  against  us.  We  decided 
just  exactly  as  scores  of  thousands  of  people  have 
decided  in  this  very  matter,  that  if  it  were  possible  to 
keep  this  thing  to  ourselves,  there  was  nothing  against 
it.  And  so  we  took  our  first  step.  With  the  hunger  of 
love  in  us,  it  was  easy  to  conclude  we  might  be  lovers, 
and  still  keep  everything  to  ourselves.  That  cleared 
our  minds  of  the  one  persistent  obstacle  that  mattered 
to  us — the  haunting  presence  of  Margaret. 

And  then  we  found,  as  all  those  scores  of  thousands 
of  people  scattered  about  us  have  found,  that  we  could 
not  keep  it  to  ourselves.  Love  will  out.  All  the  rest 
of  this  story  is  the  chronicle  of  that.  Love  with 
sustained  secrecy  cannot  be  love.  It  is  just  exactly  the 
point  people  do  not  understand. 

§5 

But  before  things  came  to  that  pass,  some  months 
and  many  phases  and  a  sudden  journey  to  America 
intervened. 

"  This  thing  spells  disaster,"  I  said.  '  You  are  too 
big  and  I  am  too  big  to  attempt  this  secrecy.  Think 
of  the  intolerable  possibility  of  being  found  out!  At 
any  cost  we  have  to  stop — even  at  the  cost  of  parting." 

"  Just  because  we  may  be  found  out !  " 


406      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

"  Just  because  we  may  be  found  out." 

"Master,  I  shouldn't  in  the  least  mind  being  found 
out  with  you.  I'm  afraid — I'd  be  proud." 

"  Wait  till  it  happens." 

There  followed  a  struggle  of  immense  insincerity 
between  us.  It  is  hard  to  tell  who  urged  and  who 
resisted. 

She  came  to  me  one  night  to  the  editorial  room  of 
the  Blue  Weekly,  and  argued  and  kissed  me  with  wet 
salt  lips,  and  wept  in  my  arms;  she  told  me  that  now 
passionate  longing  for  me  and  my  intimate  life  pos- 
sessed her,  so  that  she  could  not  work,  could  not  think 
could  not  endure  other  people  for  the  love  of  me.  .  .  . 

I  fled  absurdly.  That  is  the  secret  of  the  futile 
journey  to  America  that  puzzled  all  my  friends. 

I  ran  away  from  Isabel.  I  took  hold  of  the  situation 
with  all  my  strength,  put  in  Britten  with  sketchy,  hasty 
instructions  to  edit  the  paper,  and  started  headlong 
and  with  luggage,  from  which,  among  other  things,  my 
shaving  things  were  omitted,  upon  a  tour  round  the 
world. 

Preposterous  flight  that  was !  I  remember  as  a 
thing  almost  farcical  my  explanations  to  Margaret, 
and  how  frantically  anxious  I  was  to  prevent  the 
remote  possibility  of  her  coming  with  me,  and  how  I 
crossed  in  the  Tuscan,  a  bad,  wet  boat,  and  mixed  sea- 
sickness with  ungovernable  sorrow.  I  wept — tears.  It 
was  inexpressibly  queer  and  ridiculous — and,  good  God! 
how  I  hated  my  fellow-passengers ! 

New  York  inflamed  and  excited  me  for  a  time,  and 
when  things  slackened,  I  whirled  westward  to  Chicago — 
eating  and  drinking,  I  remember,  in  the  train  from 
shoals  of  little  dishes,  with  a  sort  of  desperate  voracity. 
I  did  the  queerest  things  to  distract  myself — no  novelist 
would  dare  to  invent  my  mental  and  emotional  muddle. 
Chicago  also  held  me  at  first,  amazing  lapse  from 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        401r 

civilisation  that  the  place  is!  and  then  abruptly,  with 
hosts  expecting  me,  and  everything  settled  for  some 
days  in  Denver,  I  found  myself  at  the  end  of  my 
renunciations,  and  turned  and  came  back  headlong  to 
London. 

Let  me  confess  it  wasn't  any  sense  of  perfect  and 
incurable  trust  and  confidence  that  brought  me  back, 
or  any  idea  that  now  I  had  strength  to  refrain.  It  was 
a  sudden  realisation  that  after  all  the  separation  might 
succeed;  some  careless  phrasing  in  one  of  her  jealously 
read  letters  set  that  idea  going  in  my  mind — the 
haunting  perception  that  I  might  return  to  London 
and  find  it  empty  of  the  Isabel  who  had  pervaded  it. 
Honour,  discretion,  the  careers  of  both  of  us,  became 
nothing  at  the  thought.  I  couldn't  conceive  my  life 
resuming  there  without  Isabel.  I  couldn't,  in  short, 
stand  it. 

I  don't  even  excuse  my  return.  It  is  inexcusable. 
I  ought  to  have  kept  upon  my  way  westward — and 
held  out.  I  couldn't.  I  wanted  Isabel,  and  I  wanted 
her  so  badly  now  that  everything  else  in  the  world 
was  phantom-like  until  that  want  was  satisfied.  Per- 
haps you  have  never  wanted  anything  like  that.  I 
went  straight  to  her. 

But  here  I  come  to  untellable  things.  There  is 
no  describing  the  reality  of  love.  The  shapes  of  things 
are  nothing,  the  actual  happenings  are  nothing,  except 
that  somehow  there  falls  a  light  upon  them  and  a 
wonder.  Of  how  we  met,  and  the  thrill  of  the  adven- 
ture, the  curious  bright  sense  of  defiance,  the  joy  of 
having  dared,  I  can't  tell — I  can  but  hint  of  just  one 
aspect,  of  what  an  amazing  lark — it's  the  only  word — 
it  seemed  to  us.  The  beauty  which  was  the  essence  of 
it,  which  justifies  it  so  far  as  it  will  bear  justification, 
eludes  statement. 

What     can    a     record    of    contrived     meetings,     of 


408      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

sundering  difficulties  evaded  and  overcome,  signify 
here?  Or  what  can  it  convey  to  say  that  one  looked 
deep  into  two  dear,  steadfast  eyes,  or  felt  a  heart  throb 
and  beat,  or  gripped  soft  hair  softly  in  a  trembling 
hand?  Robbed  of  encompassing  love,  these  things  are 
of  no  more  value  than  the  taste  of  good  wine  or  the 
sight  of  good  pictures,  or  the  hearing  of  music, — just 
sensuality  and  no  more.  No  one  can  tell  love — we  can 
only  tell  the  gross  facts  of  love  and  its  consequences. 
Given  love — given  mutuality,  and  one  has  effected  a 
supreme  synthesis  and  come  to  a  new  level  of  life — but 
only  those  who  know  can  know.  This  business  has 
brought  me  more  bitterness  and  sorrow  than  I  had 
ever  expected  to  bear,  but  even  now  I  will  not  say  that 
I  regret  that  wilful  home-coming  altogether.  We  loved 
— to  the  uttermost.  Neither  of  us  could  have  loved  any 
one  else  as  we  did  and  do  love  one  another.  It  was 
ours,  that  beauty;  it  existed  only  between  us  when  we 
were  close  together,  for  no  one  in  the  world  ever  to 
know  save  ourselves. 

My  return  to  the  office  sticks  out  in  my  memory 
with  an  extreme  vividness,  because  of  the  wild  eagle  of 
pride  that  screamed  within  me.  It  was  Tuesday  morn- 
ing, and  though  not  a  soul  in  London  knew  of  it  yet 
except  Isabel,  I  had  been  back  in  England  a  week.  I 
came  in  upon  Britten  and  stood  in  the  doorway. 

"  God!  "  he  said  at  the  sight  of  me. 

"  I'm  back,"  I  said. 

He  looked  at  my  excited  face  with  those  red-brown 
eyes  of  his.  Silently  I  defied  him  to  speak  his  mind. 

"Where  did  you  turn  back?  "  he  said  at  last. 

§/» 
6 

I  had  to  tell  what  were,  so  far  as  I  can  remember, 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        409 

\ny  first  positive  lies  to  Margaret  in  explaining  that 
return.  I  had  written  to  her  from  Chicago  and  again 
from  New  York,  saying  that  I  felt  I  ought  to  be  on 
the  spot  in  England  for  the  new  session,  and  that  I 
was  coming  back — presently.  I  concealed  the  name  of 
my  boat  from  her,  and  made  a  calculated  prevarication 
when  I  announced  my  presence  in  London.  I  tele- 
phoned before  I  went  back  for  my  rooms  to  be  pre- 
pared. She  was,  I  knew,  with  the  Bunting  Harblows 
in  Durham,  and  when  she  came  back  to  Radnor  Square 
I  had  been  at  home  a  day. 

I  remember  her  return  so  well. 

My  going  away  and  the  vivid  secret  of  the  present 
had  wiped  out  from  my  mind  much  of  our  long 
estrangement.  Something,  too,  had  changed  in  her. 
I  had  had  some  hint  of  it  in  her  letters,  but  now  I 
saw  it  plainly.  I  came  out  of  my  study  upon  the 
landing  when  I  heard  the  turmoil  of  her  arrival  below, 
and  she  came  upstairs  with  a  quickened  gladness.  It 
was  a  cold  March,  and  she  was  dressed  in  unfamiliar 
dark  furs  that  suited  her  extremely  and  reinforced  the 
delicate  flush  of  her  sweet  face.  She  held  out  both  her 
hands  to  me,  and  drew  me  to  her  unhesitatingly  and 
kissed  me. 

"  So  glad  you  are  back,  dear,"  she  said.  "  Oh !  so 
very  glad  you  are  back." 

I  returned  her  kiss  with  a  queer  feeling  at  my 
heart,  too  undifferentiated  to  be  even  a  definite  sense 
of  guilt  or  meanness.  I  think  it  was  chiefly  amaze- 
ment— at  the  universe — at  myself. 

"  I  never  knew  what  it  was  to  be  away  from  you," 
she  said. 

I  perceived  suddenly  that  she  had  resolved  to  end 
our  estrangement.  She  put  herself  so  that  my  arm 
came  caressingly  about  her. 


410      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

"  These  are  jolly  furs/'  I  said. 

"  I  got  them  for  you." 

The  parlourmaid  appeared  below  dealing  with  the 
maid  and  the  luggage  cab. 

"  Tell  me  all  about  America/'  said  Margaret.  "  I 
feel  as  though  you'd  been  away  six  years." 

We  went  arm  in  arm  into  our  little  sitting-room, 
and  I  took  off  the  furs  for  her  and  sat  down  upon  the 
chintz-covered  sofa  by  the  fire.  She  had  ordered  tea, 
and  came  and  sat  by  me.  I  don't  know  what  I  had 
expected,  but  of  all  things  I  had  certainly  not  expected 
this  sudden  abolition  of  our  distances. 

"  I  want  to  know  all  about  America,"  she  repeated, 
with  her  eyes  scrutinising  me.  "  Why  did  you  come 
back?" 

I  repeated  the  substance  of  my  letters  rather  lamely, 
and  she  sat  listening. 

"  But  why  did  you  turn  back — without  going  to 
Denver?" 

"  I  wanted  to  come  back.    I  was  restless." 

"  Restlessness,"  she  said,  and  thought.  "  You  were 
restless  in  Venice.  You  said  it  was  restlessness  took 
you  to  America." 

Again  she  studied  me.  She  turned  a  little  awkwardly 
to  her  tea  things,  and  poured  needless  water  from  the 
silver  kettle  into  the  teapot.  Then  she  sat  still  for 
some  moments  looking  at  the  equipage  with  ex- 
pressionless eyes.  I  saw  her  hand  upon  the  edge  of 
the  table  tremble  slightly.  I  watched  her  closely.  A 
vague  uneasiness  possessed  me.  What  might  she  not 
know  or  guess? 

She  spoke  at  last  with  an  effort.  "  I  wish  you  were 
in  Parliament  again,"  she  said.  "  Life  doesn't  give 
you  events  enough." 

"  If  I  was  in  Parliament  again,  I  should  be  on  the 
Conservative  side." 

"  I  know/'  she  said,  and  was  still  more  thoughtful. 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        411 

"  Lately,"  she  began,  and  paused.  "  Lately  I've 
been  reading — you." 

I  didn't  help  her  out  with  what  she  had  to  say.  I 
waited. 

"  I  didn't  understand  what  you  were  after.  I  had 
misjudged.  I  didn't  know.  I  think  perhaps  I  was 
rather  stupid."  Her  eyes  were  suddenly  shining  with 
tears.  "  You  didn't  give  me  much  chance  to  under- 
stand." 

She  turned  upon  me  suddenly  with  a  voice  full  of 
tears. 

"  Husband/'  she  said  abruptly,  holding  her  two 
hands  out  to  me,  "  I  want  to  begin  over  again !  " 

I  took  her  hands,  perplexed  beyond  measure.  "  My 
dear !  "  I  said. 

"  I  want  to  begin  over  again." 

I  bowed  my  head  to  hide  my  face,  and  found  her 
hand  in  mine  and  kissed  it. 

"  Ah ! "  she  said,  and  slowly  withdrew  her  hand. 
She  leant  forward  with  her  arm  on  the  sofa-back,  and 
looked  very  intently  into  my  face.  I  felt  the  most 
damnable  scoundrel  in  the  world  as  I  returned  her 
gaze.  The  thought  of  Isabel's  darkly  shining  eyes 
seemed  like  a  physical  presence  between  us.  ... 

"  Tell  me,"  I  said  presently,  to  break  the  intoler- 
able tension,  "tell  me  plainly  what  you  mean  by  this." 

I  sat  a  little  away  from  her,  and  then  took  my  tea- 
cup in  hand,  with  an  odd  effect  of  defending  myself. 
"Have  you  been  reading  that  old  book  of  mine?"  I 
asked. 

"  That  and  the  paper.  I  took  a  complete  set  from 
the  beginning  down  to  Durham  with  me.  I  have  read 
it  over,  thought  it  over.  I  didn't  understand — what 
you  were  teaching." 

There  was  a  little  pause. 

"  It  all  seems  so  plain  to  me  now,"  she  said,  "  and 
so  true." 


412      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

I  was  profoundly  disconcerted.  I  put  down  my  tea- 
cup, stood  up  in  the  middle  of  the  hearthrug,  and 
began  talking.  "  I'm  tremendously  glad,  Margaret, 
that  you've  come  to  see  I'm  not  altogether  perverse,"  I 
began.  I  launched  out  into  a  rather  trite  and  windy 
exposition  of  my  views,  and  she  sat  close  to  me  on  the 
sofa,  looking  up  into  my  face,  hanging  on  my  words,  a 
deliberate  and  invincible  convert. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  "  yes."  .  .  . 

I  had  never  doubted  my  new  conceptions  before; 
now  I  doubted  them  profoundly.  But  I  went  on  talk- 
ing. It's  the  grim  irony  in  the  lives  of  all  politicians, 
writers,  public  teachers,  that  once  the  audience  is  at 
their  feet,  a  new  loyalty  has  gripped  them.  It  isn't 
their  business  to  admit  doubt  and  imperfections. 
They  have  to  go  on  talking.  And  I  was  now  so  accus- 
tomed to  Isabel's  vivid  interruptions,  qualifications, 
restatements,  and  confirmations.  .  .  . 

Margaret  and  I  dined  together  at  home.  She  made 
me  open  out  my  political  projects  to  her.  "  I  have 
been  foolish,"  she  said.  "  I  want  to  help." 

And  by  some  excuse  I  have  forgotten  she  made  me 
come  to  her  room.  I  think  it  was  some  book  I  had  to 
take  her,  some  American  book  I  had  brought  back  with 
me,  and  mentioned  in  our  talk.  I  walked  in  with  it, 
and  put  it  down  on  the  table  and  turned  to  go. 

"  Husband ! "  she  cried,  and  held  out  her  slender 
arms  to  me.  I  was  compelled  to  go  to  her  and  kiss  her, 
and  she  twined  them  softly  about  my  neck  and  drew  me 
to  her  and  kissed  me.  I  disentangled  them  very  gently, 
and  took  each  wrist  and  kissed  it,  and  the  backs  of  her 
hands. 

"  Good-night,"  I  said.  There  came  a  little  pause. 
"  Good-night,  Margaret,"  I  repeated,  and  walked  very 
deliberately  and  with  a  kind  of  sham  preoccupation  to 
the  door. 

1  4id  not  look  at  her,  but  I  could  feel  her  standing, 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        413 

watching  me.     If  I  had  looked  up,  she  would,  I  knew, 
have  held  out  her  arms  to  me.  .  .   . 

At  the  very  outset  that  secret,  which  was  to  touch 
no  one  but  Isabel  and  myself,  had  reached  out  to  stab 
another  human  being. 

§  7 

The  whole  world  had  changed  for  Isabel  and  me; 
and  we  tried  to  pretend  that  nothing  had  changed  ex- 
cept a  small  matter  between  us.  We  believed  quite 
honestly  at  that  time  that  it  was  possible  to  keep  this 
thing  that  had  happened  from  any  reaction  at  all,  save 
perhaps  through  some  magically  enhanced  vigour  in 
our  work,  upon  the  world  about  us !  Seen  in  retro- 
spect, one  can  realise  the  absurdity  of  this  belief; 
within  a  week  I  realised  it;  but  that  does  not  alter 
the  fact  that  we  did  believe  as  much,  and  that  people 
who  are  deeply  in  love  and  unable  to  marry  will  con- 
tinue to  believe  so  to  the  very  end  of  time.  They  will 
continue  to  believe  out  of  existence  every  consideration 
that  separates  them  until  they  have  come  together. 
Then  they  will  count  the  cost,  as  we  two  had  to  do. 

I  am  telling  a  story,  and  not  propounding  theories 
in  this  book;  and  chiefly  I  am  telling  of  the  ideas  and 
influences  and  emotions  that  have  happened  to  me — 
me  as  a  sort  of  sounding  board  for  my  world.  The 
moralist  is  at  liberty  to  go  over  my  conduct  with  his 
measure  and  say,  "  At  this  point  or  at  that  you  went 
wrong,  and  you  ought  to  have  done  " — so-and-so.  The 
point  of  interest  to  the  statesman  is  that  it  didn't  for  a 
moment  occur  to  us  to  do  so-and-so  when  the  time  for 
doing  it  came.  It  amazes  me  now  to  think  how  little 
either  of  us  troubled  about  the  established  rights  or 
wrongs  of  the  situation.  We  hadn't  an  atom  of  respect 
for  them,  innate  or  acquired.  The  guardians  of  public 
morals  will  say  we  were  very  bad  people;  I  submit  in 


414      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

defence  that  they  are  very  bad  guardians — provocative 
guardians.  .  .  .  And  when  at  last  there  came  a  claim 
against  us  that  had  an  effective  validity  for  us,  we  were 
in  the  full  tide  of  passionate  intimacy. 

I  had  a  night  of  nearly  sleepless  perplexity  after 
[Margaret's  return.  She  had  suddenly  presented  her- 
self to  me  like  something  dramatically  recalled,  fine, 
generous,  infinitely  capable  of  feeling.  I  was  amazed 
how  much  I  had  forgotten  her.  In  my  contempt  for 
vulgarised  and  conventionalised  honour  I  had  forgotten 
that  for  me  there  was  such  a  reality  as  honour.  And 
here  it  was,  warm  and  near  to  me,  living,  breathing, 
unsuspecting.  Margaret's  pride  was  my  honour,  that 
I  had  had  no  right  even  to  imperil. 

I  do  not  now  remember  if  I  thought  at  that  time 
of  going  to  Isabel  and  putting  this  new  aspect  of  the 
case  before  her.  Perhaps  I  did.  Perhaps  I  may  have 
considered  even  then  the  possibility  of  ending  what 
had  so  freshly  and  passionately  begun.  If  I  did,  it 
vanished  next  day  at  the  sight  of  her.  Whatever  re- 
grets came  in  the  darkness,  the  daylight  brought  an 
obstinate  confidence  in  our  resolution  again.  We  would, 
we  declared,  "  pull  the  thing  off."  Margaret  must  not 
know.  Margaret  should  not  know.  If  Margaret  did 
not  know,  then  no  harm  whatever  would  be  done.  We 
tried  to  sustain  that.  .  .  . 

For  a  brief  time  we  had  been  like  two  people  in  a 
magic  cell,  magically  cut  off  from  the  world  and  full 
of  a  light  of  its  own,  and  then  we  began  to  realise  that 
we  were  not  in  the  least  cut  off,  that  the  world  was  all 
about  us  and  pressing  in  upon  us,  limiting  us,  threaten- 
ing us,  resuming  possession  of  us.  I  tried  to  ignore 
the  injury  to  Margaret  of  her  unreciprocated  advances. 
I  tried  to  maintain  to  myself  that  this  hidden  love  made 
no  difference  to  the  now  irreparable  breach  between 
husband  and  wife.  But  I  never  spoke  of  it  to  Isabel 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        415 

or  let  her  see  that  aspect  of  our  case.  How  could  I? 
The  time  for  that  had  gone.  .  .  . 

Then  in  new  shapes  and  relations  came  trouble. 
Distressful  elements  crept  in  by  reason  of  our  unavoid- 
able furtiveness;  we  ignored  them,  hid  them  from  each 
other,  and  attempted  to  hide  them  from  ourselves. 
Successful  love  is  a  thing  of  abounding  pride,  and  we 
had  to  be  secret.  It  was  delightful  at  first  to  be 
secret,  a  whispering,  warm  conspiracy;  then  presently 
it  became  irksome  and  a  little  shameful.  Her  essential 
frankness  of  soul  was  all  against  the  masks  and  false- 
hoods that  many  women  would  have  enjoyed.  Together 
in  our  secrecy  we  relaxed,  then  in  the  presence  of  other 
people  again  it  was  tiresome  to  have  to  watch  for  the 
careless,  too  easy  phrase,  to  snatch  back  one's  hand 
from  the  limitless  betrayal  of  a  light,  familiar  touch. 

Love  becomes  a  poor  thing,  at  best  a  poor  beautiful 
thing,  if  it  develops  no  continuing  and  habitual  inti- 
macy. We  were  always  meeting,  and  most  gloriously 
loving  and  beginning — and  then  we  had  to  snatch  at 
remorseless  ticking  watches,  hurry  to  catch  trains,  and 
go  back  to  this  or  that.  That  is  all  very  well  for  the 
intrigues  of  idle  people  perhaps,  but  not  for  an  intense 
personal  relationship.  It  is  like  lighting  a  candle  for 
the  sake  of  lighting  it,  over  and  over  again,  and  each 
time  blowing  it  out.  That,  no  doubt,  must  be  very 
amusing  to  children  playing  with  the  matches,  but  not 
to  people  who  love  warm  light,  and  want  it  in  order 
to  do  fine  and  honourable  things  together.  We  had 
achieved — I  give  the  ugly  phrase  that  expresses  the 
increasing  discolouration  in  my  mind — "  illicit  inter- 
course." To  end  at  that,  we  now  perceived,  wasn't  in 
our  style.  But  where  were  we  to  end?  .  .  . 

Perhaps  we  might*  at  this  stage  have  given  it  up.  I 
think  if  we  could  have  seen  ahead  and  around  us  we 
might  have  done  so.  But  the  glow  of  our  cell  blinded 


416      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELL1 

us.  ...  I  wonder  what  might  have  happened  if  at 
that  time  we  had  given  it  up.  .  .  .  We  propounded  it, 
we  met  again  in  secret  to  discuss  it,  and  our  overpower- 
ing passion  for  one  another  reduced  that  meeting  to 
absurdity.  .  .  . 

Presently  the  idea  of  children  crept  between  us.  It 
came  in  from  all  our  conceptions  of  life  and  public 
service;  it  was,  we  found,  in  the  quality  of  our  minds 
that  physical  love  without  children  is  a  little  weak, 
timorous,  more  than  a  little  shameful.  With  imagina- 
tive people  there  very  speedily  comes  a  time  when  that 
realisation  is  inevitable.  We  hadn't  thought  of  that 
before — it  isn't  natural  to  think  of  that  before.  We 
hadn't  known.  There  is  no  literature  in  English  deal- 
ing with  such  things. 

There  is  a  necessary  sequence  of  phases  in  love. 
These  came  in  their  order,  and  with  them,  unanticipated 
tarnishings  on  the  first  bright  perfection  of  our  rela- 
tions. For  a  time  these  developing  phases  were  no 
more  than  a  secret  and  private  trouble  between  us,  lit- 
tle shadows  spreading  by  imperceptible  degrees  across 
that  vivid  and  luminous  cell. 

§   8 

The  Handitch  election  flung  me  suddenly  into  promi- 
nence. 

It  is  still  only  two  years  since  that  struggle,  and  I 
will  not  trouble  the  reader  with  a  detailed  history  of 
events  that  must  be  quite  sufficiently  present  in  his  mind 
for  my  purpose  already.  Huge  stacks  of  journalism 
have  dealt  with  Handitch  and  its  significance.  For 
the  reader  very  probably,  as  for  most  people  outside  a 
comparatively  small  circle,  it  meant  my  emergence 
from  obscurity.  We  obtruded  no  editor's  name  in  the 
Blue  Weekly;  I  had  never  as  yet  been  on  the  London 
hoardings.  Before  Handitch  I  was  a  journalist  and 


LOVE    AND     SUCCESS        417 

writer  of  no  great  public  standing;  after  Handitch,  I 
was  definitely  a  person,  in  the  little  group  of  persons 
who  stood  for  the  Young  Imperialist  movement. 
Handitch  was,  to  a  very  large  extent,  my  affair.  I 
realised  then,  as  a  man  comes  to  do,  how  much  one  can 
still  grow  after  seven  and  twenty.  In  the  second  elec- 
tion I  was  a  man  taking  hold  of  things;  at  Kingham- 
stead  I  had  been  simply  a  young  candidate,  a  party 
unit,  led  about  the  constituency,  told  to  do  this  and 
that,  and  finally  washed  in  by  the  great  Anti-Imperial- 
ist flood,  like  a  starfish  rolling  up  a  beach. 

My  feminist  views  had  earnt  the  mistrust  of  the 
party,  and  I  do  not  think  I  should  have  got  the  chance 
of  Handitch  or  indeed  any  chance  at  all  of  Parliament 
for  a  long  time,  if  it  had  not  been  that  the  seat  with  its 
long  record  of  Liberal  victories  and  its  Liberal  major- 
ity of  3642  at  the  last  election,  offered  a  hopeless  con- 
test. The  Liberal  dissensions  and  the  belated  but  by 
no  means  contemptible  Socialist  candidate  were  provi- 
dential interpositions.  I  think,  however,  the  conduct 
of  Gane,  Crupp,  and  Tarvrille  in  coming  down  to  fight 
for  me,  did  count  tremendously  in  my  favour.  "We 
aren't  going  to  win,  perhaps/'  said  Crupp,  "  but  we  are 
going  to  talk."  And  until  the  very  eve  of  victory,  we 
treated  Handitch  not  so  much  as  a  battlefield  as  a  hoard- 
ing. And  so  it  was  the  Endowment  of  Motherhood  as 
a  practical  form  of  Eugenics  got  into  English  politics. 

Plutus,  our  agent,  was  scared  out  of  his  wits  when 
the  thing  began. 

"  They're  ascribing  all  sorts  of  queer  ideas  to  you 
about  the  Family/'  he  said. 

"  I  think  the  Family  exists  for  the  good  of  the  chil- 
dren," I  said ;  "  is  that  queer  ?  " 

"  Not  when  you  explain  it — but  they  won't  let  you 
explain  it.  And  about  marriage ?  " 

"  I'm  all  right  about  marriage — trust  me." 


418      THE  NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

"  Of  course,  if  you  had  children/'  said  Plutus,  rather 
inconsiderately.  .  .  . 

They  opened  fire  upon  me  in  a  little  electioneering 
rag  call  the  Handitch  Sentinel,  with  a  string  of 
garbled  quotations  and  misrepresentations  that  gave 
me  an  admirable  text  for  a  speech.  I  spoke  for  an 
hour  and  ten  minutes  with  a  more  and  more  crumpled 
copy  of  the  Sentinel  in  my  hand,  and  I  made  the  fullest 
and  completest  exposition  of  the  idea  of  endowing 
motherhood  that  I  think  had  ever  been  made  up  to  that 
time  in  England.  Its  effect  on  the  press  was  extra- 
ordinary. The  Liberal  papers  gave  me  quite  unprece-« 
dented  space  under  the  impression  that  I  had  only  to 
be  given  rope  to  hang  myself;  the  Conservatives  cut 
me  down  or  tried  to  justify  me;  the  whole  country  was 
talking.  I  had  had  a  pamphlet  in  type  upon  the  sub* 
ject,  and  I  revised  this  carefully  and  put  it  on  the  book" 
stalls  within  three  days.  It  sold  enormously  and 
brought  me  bushels  of  letters.  We  issued  over  three 
thousand  in  Handitch  alone.  At  meeting  after  meet- 
ing I  was  heckled  upon  nothing  else.  Long  before 
polling  day  Plutus  was  converted. 

"It's  catching  on  like  old  age  pensions,"  he  said, 
"We've  dished  the  Liberals!  To  think  that  such  «» 
project  should  come  from  our  side!" 

But  it  was  only  with  the  declaration  of  the  poll  that 
my  battle  was  won.  No  one  expected  more  than  t\ 
snatch  victory,  and  I  was  in  by  over  fifteen  hundred, 
At  one  bound  Cossington's  papers  passed  from  apolo** 
getics  varied  by  repudiation  to  triumphant  praise.  "  A 
renascent  England,  breeding  men,"  said  the  leader  in 
his  chief  daily  on  the  morning  after  the  polling,  and 
claimed  that  the  Conservatives  had  been  ever  the  pio- 
neers in  sanely  bold  constructive  projects. 

I  came  up  to  London  with  a  weary  but  rej  oicing  Mar- 
garet by  the  night  train. 


CHAPTER    THE     SECOND 

THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION 

To  any  one  who  did  not  know  of  that  glowing  secret 
between  Isabel  and  myself,  I  might  well  have  appeared 
at  that  time  the  most  successful  and  enviable  of  men. 
I  had  recovered  rapidly  from  an  uncongenial  start  in 
political  lif e ;  I  had  become  a  considerable  force  through 
the  Blue  Weekly,  and  was  shaping  an  increasingly  in- 
fluential body  of  opinion;  I  had  re-entered  Parliament 
with  quite  dramatic  distinction,  and  in  spite  of  a  cer- 
tain faltering  on  the  part  of  the  orthodox  Conserva- 
tives towards  the  bolder  elements  in  our  propaganda, 
I  had  loyal  and  unenvious  associates  who  were  making 
me  a  power  in  the  party.  People  were  coming  to  our 
group,  understandings  were  developing.  It  was  clear 
we  should  play  a  prominent  part  in  the  next  general 
election,  and  that,  given  a  Conservative  victory,  I  should 
be  assured  of  office.  The  world  opened  out  to  me 
brightly  and  invitingly.  Great  schemes  took  shape  in 
my  mind,  always  more  concrete,  always  more  practic- 
able; the  years  ahead  seemed  falling  into  order,  shin- 
ing with  the  credible  promise  of  immense  achievement. 

And  at  the  heart  of  it  all,  unseen  and  unsuspected, 
was  the  secret  of  my  relations  with  Isabel — like  a  seed 
that  germinates  and  thrusts,  thrusts  relentlessly. 

From  the  onset  of  the  Handitch  contest  onward,  my 
meetings  with  her  had  been  more  and  more  pervaded 
by  the  discussion  of  our  situation.  It  had  innumer- 
able aspects.  It  was  very  present  to  us  that  we  wanted 
to  be  together  as  much  as  possible — we  were  beginning 

419 


420      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

to  long  very  much  for  actual  living  together  in  the 
same  house,  so  that  one  could  come  as  it  were  care- 
lessly— unawares — upon  the  other,  busy  perhaps  about 
some  trivial  thing.  We  wanted  to  feel  each  other  in 
the  daily  atmosphere.  Preceding  our  imperatively 
sterile  passion,  you  must  remember,  outside  it,  alto- 
gether greater  than  it  so  far  as  our  individual  lives 
were  concerned,  there  had  grown  and  still  grew  an 
enormous  affection  and  intellectual  sympathy  between 
us.  We  brought  all  our  impressions  and  all  our  ideas 
to  each  other,  to  see  them  in  each  other's  light.  It  is 
hard  to  convey  that  quality  of  intellectual  unison  to 
any  one  who  has  not  experienced  it.  I  thought  more 
and  more  in  terms  of  conversation  with  Isabel;  her 
possible  comments  upon  things  would  flash  into  my 
mind,  oh! — with  the  very  sound  of  her  voice. 

I  remember,  too,  the  odd  effect  of  seeing  her  in  the 
distance  going  about  Handitch,  like  any  stranger  can- 
vasser; the  queer  emotion  of  her  approach  along  the 
street,  the  greeting  as  she  passed.  The  morning  of  the 
polling  she  vanished  from  the  constituency.  I  saw  her 
for  an  instant  in  the  passage  behind  our  Committee 
rooms. 

"Going?  "said  I. 

She  nodded. 

"  Stay  it  out.  I  want  you  to  see  the  fun.  I  remem- 
ber— the  other  time." 

She  didn't  answer  for  a  moment  or  so.  and  stood  with 
face  averted. 

"  It's   Margaret's  show,"  she  said  abruptly.     "  If  I 

see  her  smiling  there  like  a  queen  by  your  side ! 

She  did — last  time.  I  remember."  She  caught  at  a 
sob  and  dashed  her  hand  across  her  face  impatiently. 
**  Jealous  fool,  mean  and  petty,  j  ealous  fool !  .  .  . 
Good  luck,  old  man,  to  you!  You're  going  to  win. 
But  I  don't  want  to  see  the  end  of  it  all  the  same.  .  .  ." 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    421 

"  Good-bye !  "  said  I,  clasping  her  hand  as  some  sup- 
porter appeared  in  the  passage.  .  .  . 

I  came  back  to  London  victorious,  and  a  little  flushed 
and  coarse  with  victory;  and  so  soon  as  I  could  break 
away  I  went  to  Isabel's  flat  and  found  her  white  and 
worn,  with  the  stain  of  secret  weeping  about  her  eyes. 
I  came  into  the  room  to  her  and  shut  the  door. 

"  You  said  I'd  win,"  I  said,  and  held  out  my  arms. 

She  hugged  me  closely  for  a  moment. 

"My  dear,"  I  whispered,  "it's  nothing — without 
you — nothing !  " 

We  didn't  speak  for  some  seconds.  Then  she 
slipped  from  my  hold.  "  Look ! "  she  said,  smiling 
like  winter  sunshine.  "  I've  had  in  all  the  morning 
papers — the  pile  of  them,  and  you — resounding." 

"  It's  more  than  I  dared  hope." 

"  Or  I." 

She  stood  for  a  moment  still  smiling  bravely,  and 
then  she  was  sobbing  in  my  arms.  "  The  bigger  you 
are — the  more  you  show,"  she  said — "  the  more  we  are 
parted.  I  know,  I  know " 

I  held  her  close  to  me,  making  no  answer. 

Presently  she  became  still.  "  Oh,  well,"  she  said, 
and  wiped  her  eyes  and  sat  down  on  the  little  sofa  by 
the  fire;  and  I  sat  down  beside  her. 

"  I  didn't  know  all  there  was  in  love,"  she  said,  star* 
ing  at  the  coals,  "  when  we  went  love-making." 

I  put  my  arm  behind  her  and  took  a  handful  of  her 
dear  soft  hair  in  my  hand  and  kissed  it. 

"  You've  done  a  great  thing  this  time,"  she  said. 
"  Handitch  will  make  you." 

"  It  opens  big  chances,"  I  said.  "  But  why  are  you 
weeping,  dear  one?  " 

"  Envy,"  she  said,  "  and  love." 

"You're   not  lonely?" 

"  I've  plenty  to  do — and  lots  of  people." 


422      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

"Well?" 

"  I  want  you." 

"  You've  got  me." 

She  put  her  arm  about  me  and  kissed  me.  "  I  want 
you/'  she  said,  "  just  as  if  I  had  nothing  of  you.  You 
don't  understand — how  a  woman  wants  a  man.  I 
thought  once  if  I  just  gave  myself  to  you  it  would  be 
enough.  It  was  nothing — it  was  just  a  step  across  the 
threshold.  My  dear,  every  moment  you  are  away  I 
ache  for  you — ache!  I  want  to  be  about  when  it  isn't 
love-making  or  talk.  I  want  to  be  doing  things  for 
you,  and  watching  you  when  you're  not  thinking  of 
me.  All  those  safe,  careless,  intimate  things.  And 

something  else "  She  stopped.  "Dear,  I  don't 

want  to  bother  you.  I  just  want  you  to  know  I  love 
you.  .  .  ." 

She  caught  my  head  in  her  hands  and  kissed  it,  then 
stood  up  abruptly. 

I  looked  up  at  her,  a  little  perplexed. 

"Dear  heart,"  said  I,  "isn't  this  enough?  You're 
my  councillor,  my  colleague,  my  right  hand,  the  secret 
soul  of  my  life " 

"  And  I  want  to  darn  your  socks,"  she  said,  smiling 
back  at  me. 

"You're  insatiable." 

She  smiled.  "  No,"  she  said.  "  I'm  not  insatiable, 
Master.  But  I'm  a  woman  in  love.  And  I'm  finding 
out  what  I  want,  and  what  is  necessary  to  me — and 
what  I  can't  have.  That's  all." 

"We  get  a  lot." 

"We  want  a  lot.  You  and  I  are  greedy  people  for 
the  things  we  like,  Master.  It's  very  evident  we've  got 
nearly  all  we  can  ever  have  of  one  another — and  I'm 
not  satisfied." 

"What  more  is  there?" 

"  For  you — very  little.     I  wonder.     For  me — every- 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    423 

thing.  Yes — everything.  You  didn't  mean  it,  Master; 
you  didn't  know  any  more  than  I  did  when  I  began, 
but  love  between  a  man  and  a  woman  is  sometimes  very 
one-sided.  Fearfully  one-sided!  That's  all.  .  .  ." 

"Don't  you  ever  want  children?"  she  said  abruptly. 

"  I  suppose  I  do.'* 

"You  don't!" 

"  I  haven't  thought  of  them." 

"  A  man  doesn't,  perhaps.  But  I  have.  ...  I  want 
them — like  hunger.  Your  children,  and  home  iwith 
you.  Really,  continually  you!  That's  the  trouble.  .  .  . 
I  can't  have  'em,  Master,  and  I  can't  have  you." 

She  was  crying,  and  through  her  tears  she  laughed. 

"  I'm  going  to  make  a  scene,"  she  said,  "  and  get 
this  over.  I'm  so  discontented  and  miserable;  I've  got 
to  tell  you.  It  would  come  between  us  if  I  didn't.  I'm 
in  love  with  you,  with  everything — with  all  my  brains. 
I'll  pull  through  all  right.  I'll  be  good,  Master,  never 
you  fear.  But  to-day  I'm  crying  out  with  all  my  be- 
ing. This  election — —  You're  going  up;  you're  going 
on.  In  these  papers — you're  a  great  big  fact.  It's 
suddenly  come  home  to  me.  At  the  back  of  my  mind 
I've  always  had  the  idea  I  was  going  to  have  you  some- 
how presently  for  myself — I  mean  to  have  you  to  go 
long  tramps  with,  to  keep  house  for,  to  get  meals  for, 
to  watch  for  of  an  evening.  It's  a  sort  of  habitual 
background  to  my  thought  of  you.  And  it's  nonsense 
— utter  nonsense !  "  She  stopped.  She  was  crying 
and  choking.  "  And  the  child,  you  know — the  child !  " 

I  was  troubled  beyond  measure,  but  Handitch  and 
its  intimations  were  clear  and  strong. 

"We  can't  have  that,"  I  said. 

"  No,"  she  said,  "  we  can't  have  that." 

"  We've  got  our  own  things  to  do." 

"  Your  things,"  she  said. 

"  Aren't  they  yours  toe  ?  " 


424      THE    NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

"  Because  of  you/'  she  said. 

'*  Aren't  they  your  very  own  things  ?  " 

"  Women  don't  have  that  sort  of  very  own  thing. 
Indeed,  it's  true!  And  think!  You've  been  down 
there  preaching  the  goodness  of  children,  telling  them 
the  only  good  thing  in  a  state  is  happy,  hopeful  chil- 
dren, working  to  free  mothers  and  children " 

"  And  we  give  our  own  children  to  do  it  ?  "  I  said. 

"  Yes,"  she  said.  "  And  sometimes  I  think  it's  too 
much  to  give — too  much  altogether.  .  .  .  Children  get 
into  a  woman's  brain — when  she  mustn't  have  them, 
especially  when  she  must  never  hope  for  them.  Think 
of  the  child  we  might  have  now! — the  little  creature 
with  soft,  tender  skin,  and  little  hands  and  little  feet! 
At  times  it  haunts  me.  It  comes  and  says,  Why  wasn't 
I  given  life?  I  can  hear  it  in  the  night.  .  .  .  The 
world  is  full  of  such  little  ghosts,  dear  lover — little 
things  that  asked  for  life  and  were  refused.  They 
clamour  to  me.  It's  like  a  little  fist  beating  at  my 
heart.  Love  children,  beautiful  children.  Little  cold 
hands  that  tear  at  my  heart!  Oh,  my  heart  and  my 
lord ! "  She  was  holding  my  arm  with  both  her  hands 
and  weeping  against  it,  and  now  she  drew  herself  to 
my  shoulder  and  wept  and  sobbed  in  my  embrace.  "  I 
shall  never  sit  with  your  child  on  my  knee  and  you  be- 
side me — never,  and  I  am  a  woman  and  your 
lover!  .  ,  ." 


But  the  profound  impossibility  of  our  relation  was 
now  becoming  more  and  more  apparent  to  us.  We 
found  ourselves  seeking  justification,  clinging  passion- 
ately to  a  situation  that  was  coldly,  pitilessly,  impos- 
sible and  fated.  We  wanted  quite  intensely  to  live 
together  and  have  a  child,  but  also  we  wanted  very 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    425 

many  other  things  that  were  incompatible  with  these 
desires.  It  was  extraordinarily  difficult  to  weigh  our 
political  and  intellectual  ambitions  against  those  inti- 
mate wishes.  The  weights  kept  altering  according  as 
one  found  oneself  grasping  this  -valued  thing  or  that. 
It  wasn't  as  if  we  could  throw  everything  aside  for  our 
love,  and  have  that  as  we  wanted  it.  Love  such  as 
we  bore  one  another  isn't  altogether,  or  even  chiefly, 
a  thing  in  itself — it  is  for  the  most  part  a  value  set 
upon  things.  Our  love  was  interwoven  with  all  our 
other  interests ;  to  go  out  of  the  world  and  live  in  isola- 
tion seemed  to  us  like  killing  the  best  parts  of  each 
other;  we  loved  the  sight  of  each  other  engaged  finely 
and  characteristically,  we  knew  each  other  best  as 
activities.  We  had  no  delusions  about  material  facts; 
we  didn't  want  each  other  alive  or  dead,  we  wanted 
each  other  fully  alive.  We  wanted  to  do  big  things 
together,  and  for  us  to  take  each  other  openly  and  des- 
perately would  leave  us  nothing  in  the  world 
to  do.  We  wanted  children  indeed  passionately, 
but  children  with  every  helpful  chance  in  the 
world,  and  children  born  in  scandal  would  be 
handicapped  at  every  turn.  We  wanted  to  share  a 
home,  and  not  a  solitude. 

And  when  we  were  at  this  stage  of  realisation,  began 
the  intimations  that  we  were  found  out,  and  that  scan- 
dal was  afoot  against  us.  ... 

I  heard  of  it  first  from  Esmeer,  who  deliberately 
mentioned  it,  with  that  steady  grey  eye  of  his  watching 
me,  as  an  instance  of  the  preposterous  falsehoods  peo- 
ple will  circulate.  It  came  to  Isabel  almost  simul- 
taneously through  a  married  college  friend,  who  made 
it  her  business  to  demand  either  confirmation  or  denial. 
It  filled  us  both  with  consternation.  In  the  surprise 
of  the  moment  Isabel  admitted  her  secret,  and  her 
friend  went  off  "  reserving  her  freedom  of  action." 


426      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

Discovery  broke  out  in  every  direction.  Friends 
with  grave  faces  and  an  atmosphere  of  infinite  tact 
invaded  us  both.  Other  friends  ceased  to  invade  either 
of  us.  It  was  manifest  we  had  become — we  knew  not 
how — a  private  scandal,  a  subject  for  duologues,  an 
amazement,  a  perplexity,  a  vivid  interest.  In  a  few 
brief  weeks  it  seemed  London  passed  from  absolute 
unsuspiciousness  to  a  chattering  exaggeration  of  its 
knowledge  of  our  relations. 

It  was  just  the  most  inappropriate  time  for  that 
disclosure.  The  long  smouldering  antagonism  to  my 
endowment  of  motherhood  ideas  had  flared  up  into  an 
active  campaign  in  the  Expurgator,  and  it  would  be 
altogether  disastrous  to  us  if  I  should  be  convicted  of 
any  personal  irregularity.  It  was  just  because  of  the 
manifest  and  challenging  respectability  of  my  position 
that  I  had  been  able  to  carry  the  thing  as  far  as  I  had 
done.  Now  suddenly  my  fortunes  had  sprung  a  leak, 
and  scandal  was  pouring  in.  ...  It  chanced,  too,  that 
a  wave  of  moral  intolerance  was  sweeping  through 
London,  one  of  those  waves  in  which  the  bitterness  of 
the  consciously  just  finds  an  ally  in  the  panic  of  the 
undiscovered.  A  certain  Father  Blodgett  had  been 
preaching  against  social  corruption  with  extraordinary 
force,  and  had  roused  the  Church  of  England  people 
to  a  kind  of  competition  in  denunciation.  The  old 
methods  of  the  Anti-Socialist  campaign  had  been  re- 
newed, and  had  offered  far  too  wide  a  scope  and  too 
tempting  an  opportunity  for  private  animosity,  to  be 
restricted  to  the  private  affairs  of  the  Socialists.  I 
had  intimations  of  an  extensive  circulation  of  "  private 
and  confidential "  letters.  .  .  . 

I  think  there  can  be  nothing  else  in  life  quite  like 
the  unnerving  realisation  that  rumour  and  scandal  are 
afoot  about  one.  Abruptly  one's  confidence  in  the 
solidity  of  the  universe  disappears.  One  walks  si- 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    427 

lenced  through  a  world  that  one  feels  to  be  full  of  in- 
audible accusations.  One  cannot  challenge  the  assault, 
get  it  out  into  the  open,  separate  truth  and  falsehood. 
It  slinks  from  you,  turns  aside  its  face.  Old  acquaint- 
ances suddenly  evaded  me,  made  extraordinary  excuses; 
men  who  had  presumed  on  the  verge  of  my  world  and 
pestered  me  with  an  intrusive  enterprise,  now  took 
the  bold  step  of  flat  repudiation.  I  became  doubtful 
about  the  return  of  a  nod,  retracted  all  those  tentacles 
of  easy  civility  that  I  had  hitherto  spread  to  the  world. 
I  still  grow  warm  with  amazed  indignation  when  I  re- 
call that  Edward  Crampton,  meeting  me  full  on  the 
steps  of  the  Climax  Club,  cut  me  dead.  "  By  God ! " 
I  cried,  and  came  near  catching  him  by  the  throat  and 
wringing  out  of  him  what  of  all  good  deeds  and  bad, 
could  hearten  him,  a  younger  man  than  I  and  empty 
beyond  comparison,  to  dare  to  play  the  judge  to  me. 
And  then  I  had  an  open  slight  from  Mrs.  Millingham, 
whom  I  had  counted  on  as  one  counts  upon  the  sunrise. 
I  had  not  expected  things  of  that  sort;  they  were  dis- 
concerting beyond  measure;  it  was  as  if  the  world  were 
giving  way  beneath  my  feet,  as  though  something  failed 
in  the  essential  confidence  of  life,  as  though  a  hand  of 
wet  ice  had  touched  my  heart.  Similar  things  were 
happening  to  Isabel.  Yet  we  went  on  working,  visit- 
ing, meeting,  trying  to  ignore  this  gathering  of  im- 
placable forces  against  us. 

For  a  time  I  was  perplexed  beyond  measure  to  ac- 
count for  this  campaign.  Then  I  got  a  clue.  The 
centre  of  diffusion  was  the  Bailey  household.  The 
Baileys  had  never  forgiven  me  my  abandonment  of 
the  young  Liberal  group  they  had  done  so  much  to 
inspire  and  organise;  their  dinner-table  had  long  been 
a  scene  of  hostile  depreciation  of  the  Blue  Weekly  and 
all  its  allies;  week  after  week  Altiora  proclaimed  that 
I  was  "  doing  nothing,"  and  found  other  causes  for  our 


428      THE    NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

bye-election  triumphs;  I  counted  Chambers  Street  a 
dangerous  place  for  me.  Yet,  nevertheless,  I  was  as- 
tonished to  find  them  using  a  private  scandal  against 
me.  They  did.  I  think  Handitch  had  filled  up  the 
measure  of  their  bitterness,  for  I  had  not  only  aban- 
doned them,  but  I  was  succeeding  beyond  even  their 
power  of  misrepresentation.  Always  I  had  been  a 
wasp  in  their  spider's  web,  difficult  to  claim  as  a  tool, 
uncritical,  antagonistic.  I  admired  their  work  and  de- 
votion enormously,  but  I  had  never  concealed  my  con- 
tempt for  a  certain  childish  vanity  they  displayed,  and 
for  the  frequent  puerility  of  their  political  intrigues. 
I  suppose  contempt  galls  more  than  injuries,  and  any- 
how they  had  me  now.  They  had  me.  Bailey,  I 
found,  was  warning  fathers  of  girls  against  me  as  a 
"reckless  libertine,"  and  Altiora,  flushed,  roguish,  and 
dishevelled,  was  sitting  on  her  fender  curb  after  din- 
ner, and  pledging  little  parties  of  five  or  six  women 
at  a  time  with  infinite  gusto  not  to  let  the  matter  go 
further.  Our  cell  was  open  to  the  world,  and  a  bleak, 
distressful  daylight  streaming  in. 

I  had  a  gleam  of  a  more  intimate  motive  in  Altiora 
from  the  reports  that  came  to  me.  Isabel  had  been 
doing  a  series  of  five  or  six  articles  in  the  Political  Re- 
view  in  support  of  our  campaign,  the  Political  Review 
which  had  hitherto  been  loyally  Baileyite.  Quite  her 
best  writing  up  to  the  present,  at  any  rate,  is  in  those 
papers,  and  no  doubt  Altiora  had  had  not  only  to  read 
her  in  those  invaded  columns,  but  listen  to  her  praises 
in  the  mouths  of  the  tactless  influential.  Altiora,  like 
so  many  people  who  rely  on  gesture  and  vocal  insistence 
in  conversation,  writes  a  poor  and  slovenly  prose  and 
handles  an  argument  badly;  Isabel  has  her  University 
training  behind  her  and  wrote  from  the  first  with  the 
stark  power  of  a  clear-headed  man.  "  Now  we  know," 
said  Altiora,  with  just  a  gleam  of  malice  showing 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    429 

through  her  brightness,  "  now  we  know  who  helps  with 
the  writing !  " 

She  revealed   astonishing  knowledge. 

For  a  time  I  couldn't  for  the  life  of  me  discover  her 
sources.  I  had,  indeed,  a  desperate  intention  of  chal- 
lenging her,  and  then  I  bethought  me  of  a  youngster 
named  Curmain,  who  had  been  my  supplemental  typist 
and  secretary  for  a  time,  and  whom  I  had  sent  on  to 
her  before  the  days  of  our  breach.  "  Of  course ! " 
said  I,  "  Curmain !  "  He  was  a  tall,  drooping,  side- 
long youth  with  sandy  hair,  a  little  forward  head,  and 
a  long  thin  neck.  He  stole  stamps,  and,  I  suspected, 
rifled  my  private  letter  drawer,  and  I  found  him  one 
day  on  a  turn  of  the  stairs  looking  guilty  and  ruffled 
with  a  pretty  Irish  housemaid  of  Margaret's  manifestly 
in  a  state  of  hot  indignation.  I  saw  nothing,  but  I 
felt  everything  in  the  air  between  them.  I  hate  this 
pestering  of  servants,  but  at  the  same  time  I  didn't 
want  Curmain  wiped  out  of  existence,  so  I  had  packed 
him  off  without  unnecessary  discussion  to  Altiora.  He 
was  quick  and  cheap  anyhow,  and  I  thought  her  gen- 
eral austerity  ought  to  redeem  him  if  anything  could; 
the  Chambers  Street  housemaid  wasn't  for  any  man's 
kissing  and  showed  it,  and  the  stamps  and  private  let- 
ters were  looked  after  with  an  efficiency  altogether  sur- 
passing mine.  And  Altiora,  I've  no  doubt  left  now 
whatever,  pumped  this  young  undesirable  about  me,  and 
scenting  a  story,  had  him  to  dinner  alone  one  evening 
to  get  to  the  bottom  of  the  matter.  She  got  quite  to 
the  bottom  of  it, — it  must  have  been  a  queer  duologue. 
She  read  Isabel's  careless,  intimate  letters  to  me,  so 
to  speak,  by  this  proxy,  and  she  wasn't  ashamed  to  use 
this  information  in  the  service  of  the  bitterness  that 
had  sprung  up  in  her  since  our  political  breach.  It 
was  essentially  a  personal  bitterness;  it  helped  no  pub- 
lic purpose  of  theirs  to  get  rid  of  me.  My  downfall 


430      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

in  any  public  sense  was  sheer  waste, — the  loss  of  a 
man.  She  knew  she  was  behaving  badly,  and  so,  when 
it  came  to  remonstrance,  she  behaved  worse.  She'd 
got  names  and  dates  and  places;  the  efficiency  of  her 
information  was  irresistible.  And  she  set  to  work  at 
it  marvellously.  Never  before,  in  all  her  pursuit  of 
efficient  ideals,  had  Altiora  achieved  such  levels  of  ef- 
ficiency. I  wrote  a  protest  that  was  perhaps  ill-ad- 
vised and  angry,  I  went  to  her  and  tried  to  stop  her. 
She  wouldn't  listen,  she  wouldn't  think,  she  denied  and 
lied,  she  behaved  like  a  naughty  child  of  six  years  old 
which  has  made  up  its  mind  to  be  hurtful.  It  wasn't 
only,  I  think,  that  she  couldn't  bear  our  political  and 
social  influence;  she  also — I  realised  at  that  interview 
couldn't  bear  our  loving.  It  seemed  to  her  the  sickli- 
est thing, — a  thing  quite  unendurable.  While  such 
things  were,  the  virtue  had  gone  out  of  her  world. 

I've  the  vividest  memory  of  that  call  of  mine.  She'd 
just  come  in  and  taken  off  her  hat,  and  she  was  grey 
and  dishevelled  and  tired,  and  in  a  business-like  dress 
of  black  and  crimson  that  didn't  suit  her  and  was 
muddy  about  the  skirts;  she'd  a  cold  in  her  head  and 
sniffed  penetratingly,  she  avoided  my  eye  as  she  talked 
and  interrupted  everything  I  had  to  say;  she  kept  stab- 
bing fiercely  at  the  cushions  of  her  sofa  with  a  long 
hat-pin  and  pretending  she  was  overwhelmed  with  grief 
at  the  debacle  she  was  deliberately  organising. 

"  Then  part,"  she  cried,  "  part.  If  you  don't  want 
a  smashing  up, — part !  You  two  have  got  to  be  parted. 
You've  got  never  to  see  each  other  ever,  never  to 
speak."  There  was  a  zest  in  her  voice.  "  We're  not 
circulating  stories,"  she  denied.  "  No !  And  Curmaln 
never  told  us  anything — Curmain  is  an  excellent  young 
man ;  oh !  a  quite  excellent  young  man.  You  mis- 
judged  him  altogether."  .  .  . 

I   was   equally  unsuccessful  with  Bailey.     I   caught 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    431 

the  little  wretch  in  the  League  Club,  and  he  wriggled 
and  lied.  He  wouldn't  say  where  he  had  got  his  facts, 
he  wouldn't  admit  he  had  told  any  one.  When  I  gave 
him  the  names  of  two  men  who  had  come  to  me  aston- 
ished and  incredulous,  he  attempted  absurdly  to  make 
me  think  they  had  told  him.  He  did  his  horrible  lit- 
tle best  to  suggest  that  honest  old  Quackett,  who  had 
just  left  England  for  the  Cape,  was  the  real  scandal- 
monger. That  struck  me  as  mean,  even  for  Bailey. 
I've  still  the  odd  vivid  impression  of  his  fluting  voice, 
excusing  the  inexcusable,  his  big,  shifty  face  evading 
me,  his  perspiration-beaded  forehead,  the  shrugging 
shoulders,  and  the  would-be  exculpatory  gestures — 
Houndsditch  gestures — of  his  enormous  ugly  hands. 

"  I  can  assure  you,  my  dear  fellow,"  he  said;  "  I 
can  assure  you  we've  done  everything  to  shield  you — 
everything."  .  .  . 


Isabel  came  after  dinner  one  evening  and  talked  in 
the  office.  She  made  a  white-robed,  dusky  figure 
against  the  deep  blues  of  my  big  window.  I  sat  at  my 
desk  and  tore  a  quill  pen  to  pieces  as  I  talked. 

"  The  Baileys  don't  intend  to  let  this  drop,"  I  said. 
"  They  mean  that  every  one  in  London  is  to  know  about 
it." 

"  I  know." 

"Well!"  I  said. 

"  Dear  heart,"  said  Isabel,  facing  it,  "  it's  no  good 
waiting  for  things  to  overtake  us;  we're  at  the  parting 
of  the  ways." 

"  What  are  we  to  do  ?  " 

"  They  won't  let  us  go  on." 

"Damn  them!" 

"  They   are  organising  scandal." 

"  It's  no  good  waiting  for  things  to  overtake  us,"  I 


432      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

echoed ;  "  they  have  overtaken  us."  I  turned  on  her. 
"  What  do  you  want  to  do  ?  " 

"  Everything,"  she  said.  "  Keep  you  and  have  our 
work.  Aren't  we  Mates?  " 

"We   can't." 

"And  we  can't!" 

"  I've  got  to  tell  Margaret,"  I  said. 

"  Margaret !  " 

"  I  can't  bear  the  idea  of  any  one  else  getting  in 
front  with  it.  I've  been  wincing  about  Margaret 
secretly " 

"  I  know.  You'll  have  to  tell  her — and  make  your 
peace  with  her." 

She  leant  back  against  the  bookcases  under  the 
window. 

"  We've  had  some  good  times,  Master/'  she  said,  with 
a  sigh  in  her  voice. 

And  then  for  a  long  time  we  stared  at  one  another 
in  silence. 

"  We  haven't  much  time  left,"  she  said. 

"Shall  we  bolt?"  I  said. 

"  And  leave  all  this  ?  "  she  asked,  with  her  eyes  go- 
ing round  the  room.  "  And  that  ?  "  And  her  head 
indicated  Westminster.  "No!" 

I   said  no  more   of  bolting. 

"  We've  got  to  screw  ourselves  up  to  surrender,"  she 
said. 

"  Something." 

"  A  lot." 

"  Master/'  she  said,  "  it  isn't  all  sex  and  stuff  be- 
tween us  ?  " 

"No!" 

"  I  can't  give  up  the  work.     Our  work's  my  life." 

We  came  upon  another  long  pause. 

"  No  one  will  believe  we've  ceased  to  be  lovers — if 
we  simply  do,"  she  said. 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    433 

"We   shouldn't." 

"  We've  got  to  do  something  more  parting  than  that." 

I  nodded,  and  again  we  paused.  She  was  coming 
to  something. 

"  I   could  marry   Shoesmith/'  she  said  abruptly. 

"But "  I  objected. 

"  He  knows.     It  wasn't  fair.     I  told  him." 

"  Oh,  that  explains/'  I  said.  "  There's  been  a  kind 
of  sulkiness But — you  told  him?  " 

She  nodded.  "  He's  rather  badly  hurt/'  she  said. 
"  He's  been  a  good  friend  to  me.  He's  curiously 
loyal.  But  something,  something  he  said  one  day — 
forced  me  to  let  him  know.  .  .  .  That's  been  the  beast- 
liness of  all  this  secrecy.  That's  the  beastliness  of  all 
secrecy.  You  have  to  spring  surprises  on  people.  But 
he  keeps  on.  He's  steadfast.  He'd  already  suspected. 
He  wants  me  very  badly  to  marry  him.  .  .  ." 

"  But  you  don't  want  to  marry  him?  " 

"  I'm  forced  to  think  of  it." 

"  But  does  he  want  to  marry  you  at  that?  Take 
you  as  a  present  from  the  world  at  large? — against 
your  will  and  desire?  ...  I  don't  understand  him." 

"  He  cares  for  me." 

"How?" 

"  He  thinks  this  is  a  fearful  mess  for  me.  He 
wants  to  pull  it  straight." 

We  sat  for  a  time  in  silence,  with  imaginations  that 
obstinately  refused  to  take  up  the  realities  of  this 
proposition. 

"  I  don't  want  you  to  marry  Shoesmith/'  I  said  at 
last. 

"Don't  you  like  him?" 

"  Not  as  your  husband." 

"  He's  a  very  clever  and  sturdy  person — and  very 
generous  and  devoted  to  me." 

"And  me?" 


434      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

"  You  can't  expect  that.  He  thinks  you  are  won- 
derful— and,  naturally,  that  you  ought  not  to  have 
started  this." 

"  I've  a  curious  dislike  to  any  one  thinking  that  but 
myself.  I'm  quite  ready  to  think  it  myself." 

"  He'd  let  us  be  friends — and  meet." 

"  Let  us  be  friends !  "  I  cried,  after  a  long  pause, 
"You  and  me!" 

"  He  wants  me  to  be  engaged  soon.  Then,  he  says, 
he  can  go  round  fighting  these  rumours,  defending  us 
both — and  force  a  quarrel  on  the  Baileys." 

"  I  don't  understand  him,"  I  said,  and  added,  "  I 
don't  understand  you." 

I  was  staring  at  her  face.  It  seemed  white  and  set 
in  the  dimness. 

"  Do  you  really  mean  this,  Isabel?  "  I  asked. 

"  What  else  is  there  to  do,  my  dear  ? — what  else  is 
there  to  do  at  all?  I've  been  thinking  day  and  night. 
You  can't  go  away  with  me.  You  can't  smash  your- 
self suddenly  in  the  sight  of  all  men.  I'd  rather  die 
than  that  should  happen.  Look  what  you  are  becom- 
ing in  the  country!  Look  at  all  you've  built  up! — me 
helping.  I  wouldn't  let  you  do  it  if  you  could.  I 
wouldn't  let  you — if  it  were  only  for  Margaret's  sake. 
This  .  .  .  closes  the  scandal,  closes  everything." 

"  It  closes  all  our  life  together,"  I  cried. 

She  was  silent. 

"  It  never  ought  to  have  begun,"  I   said. 

She  winced.  Then  abruptly  she  was  on  her  knees 
before  me,  with  her  hands  upon  my  shoulder  and  her 
eyes  meeting  mine. 

"  My  dear,"  she  said  very  earnestly,  "  don't  mis- 
understand me!  Don't  think  I'm  retreating  from  the 
things  we've  done!  Our  love  is  the  best  thing  I  could 
ever  have  had  from  life.  Nothing  can  ever  equal  it; 
nothing  could  ever  equal  the  beauty  and  delight  you 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    435 

and  I  have  had  together.  Never!  You  have  loved 
me;  you  do  love  me.  .  .  . 

"  No  one  could  ever  know  how  to  love  you  as  I  have 
loved  you;  no  one  could  ever  love  me  as  you  have  loved 
me,  my  king.  And  it's  just  because  it's  been  so 
splendid,  dear;  it's  just  because  I'd  die  rather  than 
have  a  tithe  of  all  this  wiped  out  of  my  life  again — for 
it's  made  me,  it's  all  I  am — dear,  it's  years  since  I 
began  loving  you — it's  just  because  of  its  goodness  that 
I  want  not  to  end  in  wreckage  now,  not  to  end  in  the 
smashing  up  of  all  the  big  things  I  understand  in  you 
and  love  in  you.  .  .  . 

"  What  is  there  for  us  if  we  keep  on  and  go  away  ?  " 
she  went  on.  "  All  the  big  interests  in  our  lives  will 
vanish — everything.  We  shall  become  specialised  peo- 
ple— people  overshadowed  by  a  situation.  We  shall 
be  an  elopement,  a  romance — all  our  breadth  and  mean- 
ing gone!  People  will  always  think  of  it  first  when 
they  think  of  us;  all  our  work  and  aims  will  be  warped 
by  it  and  subordinated  to  it.  Is  it  good  enough,  dear? 
Just  to  specialise.  ...  I  think  of  you.  We've  got  a 
case,  a  passionate  case,  the  best  of  cases,  but  do  we 
want  to  spend  all  our  lives  defending  it  and  justifying 
it?  And  there's  that  other  life.  I  know  now  you  care 
for  Margaret — you  care  more  than  you  think  you  do. 
You  have  said  fine  things  of  her.  I've  watched  you 
about  her.  Little  things  have  dropped  from  you. 
She's  given  her  life  for  you;  she's  nothing  without 
you.  You  feel  that  to  your  marrow  all  the  time  you 
are  thinking  about  these  things.  Oh,  I'm  not  jealous, 
dear.  I  love  you  for  loving  her.  I  love  you  in  rela- 
tion to  her.  But  there  it  is,  an  added  weight  against 
us,  another  thing  worth  saving." 

Presently,  I  remember,  she  sat  back  on  her  heels  and 
looked  up  into  my  face.  "  We've  done  wrong — and 
parting's  paying.  It's  time  to  pay.  We  needn't  have 


436      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

paid,  if  we'd  kept  to  the  track.  .  .  .  You  and  I,  Master, 
we've  got  to  be  men." 

"  Yes/'  I  said;  "  we've  got  to  be  men." 


§*  / 

I  was  driven  to  tell  Margaret  about  our  situation 
by  my  intolerable  dread  that  otherwise  the  thing  might 
come  to  her  through  some  stupid  and  clumsy  informant. 
She  might  even  meet  Altiora,  and  have  it  from  her. 

I  can  still  recall  the  feeling  of  sitting  at  my  desk 
that  night  in  that  large  study  of  mine  in  Radnor 
Square,  waiting  for  Margaret  to  come  home.  It  was 
oddly  like  the  feeling  of  a  dentist's  reception-room; 
only  it  was  for  me  to  do  the  dentistry  with  clumsy, 
cruel  hands.  I  had  left  the  door  open  so  that  she 
would  come  in  to  me. 

I  heard  her  silken  rustle  on  the  stairs  at  last,  and 
then  she  was  in  the  doorway.  "  May  I  come  in?  "  she 
said. 

"  Do,"  I  said,  and  turned  round  to  her. 

"Working?"  she  said. 

"Hard,"    I    answ>    ed.     "Where   have   you   been?" 

"  At  the  Vallerys'r  Mr.  Evesham  was  talking  about 
you.  They  were  all  talking.  I  don't  think  everybody 
knew  who  I  was.  JtJt  Mrs.  Mumble  I'd  been  to  them. 
Lord  Wardenham  doesn't  like  you." 

"  He  doesn't." 

"  But  they  all  feel  you're  rather  big,  anyhow.  Then 
I  went  on  to  Park  Lane  to  hear  a  new  pianist  and  some 
other  music  at  Eva's." 

"  Yes." 

"  Then  I  looked  in  at  the  Brabants'  for  some  mid- 
night tea  before  I  came  on  here.  They'd  got  some 
writers — and  Grant  was  there." 

"  You  have  been  flying  round.  ..." 

There  was  a  little  pause  between  us. 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    437 

I  looked  at  her  pretty,  unsuspecting  face,  and  at  the 
slender  grace  of  her  golden-robed  body.  What  gulfs 
there  were  between  us !  "  You've  been  amused/'  I  said. 

"  It's  been  amusing.     You've  been  at  the  House?  " 

"  The  Medical  Education  Bill  kept  me."  .  .  . 

After  all,  why  should  I  tell  her?  She'd  got  to  a 
way  of  living  that  fulfilled  her  requirements.  Per- 
haps she'd  never  hear.  But  all  that  day  and  the  day 
before  I'd  been  making  up  my  mind  to  do  the  thing. 

"  I  want  to  tell  you  something/'  I  said.  "  I  wish 
you'd  sit  down  for  a  moment  or  so."  .  .  . 

Once  I  had  begun,  it  seemed  to  me  I  had  to  go 
through  with  it. 

Something  in  the  quality  of  my  voice  gave  her  an 
intimation  of  unusual  gravity.  She  looked  at  me  stead- 
ily for  a  moment  and  sat  down  slowly  in  my  armchair. 
"What  is  it?"  she  said. 

I  went  on  awkwardly.  "  I've  got  to  tell  you — 
something  extraordinarily  distressing/'  I  said. 

She  was  manifestly  altogether  unaware. 

"  There  seems  to  be  a  good  deal  of  scandal  abroad 
— I've  only  recently  heard  of  it — about  myself — and 
Isabel." 

"Isabel!" 

I  nodded. 

"  What  do  they  say?  "  she  asked. 

It  was  difficult,  I  found,  to  speak. 

"  They  say  she's  my  mistress." 

"Oh!     How  abominable!" 

She  spoke  with  the  most  natural  indignation.  Our 
eyes  met. 

"  We've  been  great  friends,"  I  said. 

"  Yes.  And  to  make  that  of  it.  My  poor  dear ! 
But  how  can  they?  "  She  paused  and  looked  at  me. 
"  It's  so  incredible.  How  can  any  one  believe  it?  I 
couldn't." 

She  stopped,  with  her  distressed  eyes  regarding  me. 


438      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

Her  expression  changed  to  dread.  There  was  a  tense 
stillness  for  a  second,  perhaps. 

I  turned  my  face  towards  the  desk,  and  took  up  and 
dropped  a  handful  of  paper  fasteners. 

"  Margaret/'  I  said,  "  I'm  afraid  you'll  have  to  be- 
lieve it." 

§  5 

Margaret  sat  very  still.  When  I  looked  at  her 
again,  her  face  was  very  white,  and  her  distressed  eyes 
scrutinised  me.  Her  lips  quivered  as  she  spoke.  "  You 
really  mean — that?  "  she  said. 

I  nodded. 

"  I  never  dreamt." 

"  I  never  meant  you  to  dream." 

"  And  that  is  why — we've  been  apart  ?  " 

I  thought.     "  I  suppose  it  is." 

"  Why  have  you  told  me  now  ?  " 

"  Those  rumours.  I  didn't  want  any  one  else  to 
tell  you." 

"  Or  else  it  wouldn't  have  mattered  ?  " 

"  No." 

She  turned  her  eyes  from  me  to  the  fire.  Then  for 
a  moment  she  looked  about  the  room  she  had  made 
for  me,  and  then  quite  silently,  with  a  childish  quiver- 
ing of  her  lips,  with  a  sort  of  dismayed  distress  upon 
her  face,  she  was  weeping.  She  sat  weeping  in  her 
dress  of  cloth  of  gold,  with  her  bare  slender  arms 
dropped  limp  over  the  arms  of  her  chair,  and  her  eyes 
averted  from  me,  making  no  effort  to  stay  or  staunch 
her  tears.  "  I  am  sorry,  Margaret,"  I  said.  "  I  was 
in  love.  ...  I  did  not  understand.  .  .  ." 

Presently  she  asked:  "  What  are  you  going  to  do?  " 

"  You  see,  Margaret,  now  it's  come  to  be  your  af' 
fair — I  want  to  know  what  you — what  you  want/* 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION     439 

"  You  want  to  leave  me  ?  " 

"  If  you  want  me  to,  I  must." 

"  Leave  Parliament — leave  all  the  things  you  are 
doing, — all  this  fine  movement  of  yours?  " 

"  No."  I  spoke  sullenly.  "  I  don't  want  to  leave 
anything.  I  want  to  stay  on.  I've  told  you,  because 
I  think  we — Isabel  and  I,  I  mean — have  got  to  drive 
through  a  storm  of  scandal  anyhow.  I  don't  know  how, 
far  things  may  go,  how  much  people  may  feel,  and  I 
can't,  I  can't  have  you  unconscious,  unarmed,  open  to 
any  revelation " 

She  made  no  answer. 

"  When  the  thing  began — I  knew  it  was  stupid  but 
I  thought  it  was  a  thing  that  wouldn't  change,  wouldn't 
be  anything  but  itself,  wouldn't  unfold — conse- 
quences. .  .  .  People  have  got  hold  of  these  vague 
rumours.  .  .  .  Directly  it  reached  any  one  else  but — 
but  us  two — I  saw  it  had  to  come  to  you." 

I  stopped.  I  had  that  distressful  feeling  I  have  al- 
ways had  with  Margaret,  of  not  being  altogether  sure 
she  heard,  of  being  doubtful  if  she  understood.  I  per- 
ceived that  once  again  I  had  struck  at  her  and  shat- 
tered a  thousand  unsubstantial  pinnacles.  And  I 
couldn't  get  at  her,  to  help  her,  or  touch  her  mind!  I 
stood  up,  and  at  my  movement  she  moved.  She  pro- 
duced a  dainty  little  handkerchief,  and  made  an  effort 
to  wipe  her  face  with  it,  and  held  it  to  her  eyes.  "  Oh, 
my  Husband !  "  she  sobbed. 

"  What  do  you  mean  to  do  ? "  she  said,  with  her 
voice  muffled  by  her  handkerchief. 

"  We're  going  to  end  it,"  I  said. 

Something  gripped  me  tormentingly  as  I  said  that. 
I  drew  a  chair  beside  her  and  sat  down.  "  You  and  I, 
Margaret,  have  been  partners,"  I  began.  "  We've  built 
up  this  life  of  ours  together;  I  couldn't  have  done  it 


440      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

without  you.  We've  made  a  position,  created  a 
work " 

She  shook  her  head.     "  You/'  she  said. 

"  You  helping.  I  don't  want  to  shatter  it — if  you 
don't  want  it  shattered.  I  can't  leave  my  work.  I 
can't  leave  you.  I  want  you  to  have — all  that  you 
have  ever  had.  I've  never  meant  to  rob  you.  I've 
made  an  immense  and  tragic  blunder.  You  don't  know 
how  things  took  us,  how  different  they  seemed!  My 

character  and  accident  have  conspired We'll  pay 

— in  ourselves,  not  in  our  public  service." 

I    halted   again.     Margaret   remained   very   still. 

"  I  want  you  to  understand  that  the  thing  is  at  an 
end.  It  is  definitely  at  an  end.  We — we  talked — 
yesterday.  We  mean  to  end  it  altogether."  I  clenched 
my  hands.  "  She's — she's  going  to  marry  Arnold 
Shoesmith." 

I  wasn't  looking  now  at  Margaret  any  more,  but  I 
heard  the  rustle  of  her  movement  as  she  turned  on  me. 

"  It's  all  right,"  I  said,  clinging  to  my  explanation. 
"  We're  doing  nothing  shabby.  He  knows.  He  will. 
It's  all  as  right — as  things  can  be  now.  We're  not 
cheating  any  one,  Margaret.  We're  doing  things 
straight — now.  Of  course,  you  know.  .  .  .  We  shall 
— we  shall  have  to  make  sacrifices.  Give  things  up 
pretty  completely.  Very  completely.  .  .  .  We  shall 
have  not  to  see  each  other  for  a  time,  you  know.  Per- 
haps not  a  long  time.  Two  or  three  years.  Or  write 
— or  just  any  of  that  sort  of  thing  ever " 

Some  subconscious  barrier  gave  way  in  me.  I  found 
myself  crying  uncontrollably — as  I  have  never  cried 
since  I  was  a  little  child.  I  was  amazed  and  horrified 
at  myself.  And  wonderfully,  Margaret  was  on  her 
knees  beside  me,  with  her  arms  about  me,  mingling  her 
weeping  with  mine.  "  Oh,  my  Husband !  "  she  cried, 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    441 

"my  poor  Husband!  Does  it  hurt  you  so?  I  would 
do  anything!  Oh,  the  fool  I  am!  Dear,  I  love  you. 
I  love  you  over  and  away  and  above  all  these  jealous 
little  things !  " 

She  drew  down  my  head  to  her  as  a  mother  might 
draw  down  the  head  of  a  son.  She  caressed  me,  weep- 
ing bitterly  with  me.  "  Oh !  my  dear,"  she  sobbed, 
"my  dear!  I've  never  seen  you  cry!  I've  never  seen 
you  cry.  Ever!  I  didn't  know  you  could.  Oh!  my 
dear!  Can't  you  have  her,  my  dear,  if  you  want  her? 
I  can't  bear  it!  Let  me  help  you,  dear.  Oh!  my 
Husband !  My  Man !  I  can't  bear  to  have  you  cry !  " 
For  a  time  she  held  me  in  silence. 

"  I've  thought  this  might  happen,  I  dreamt  it  might 
happen.  You  two,  I  mean.  It  was  dreaming  put  it 
into  my  head.  When  I've  seen  you  together,  so  glad 
with  each  other.  .  .  .  Oh!  Husband  mine,  believe  me! 
believe  me!  I'm  stupid,  I'm  cold,  I'm  only  beginning 
to  realise  how  stupid  and  cold,  but  all  I  want  in  all  the 
world  is  to  give  my  life  to  you."  .  .  . 

§  6 

"  We  can't  part  in  a  room/'  said  Isabel. 

"We'll  have  one  last  talk  together,"  I  said,  and 
planned  that  we  should  meet  for  a  half  a  day  between 
Dover  and  Walmer  and  talk  ourselves  out.  I  still  re- 
call that  day  very  well,  recall  even  the  curious  exalta- 
tion of  grief  that  made  our  mental  atmosphere  dis- 
tinctive and  memorable.  We  had  seen  so  much  of  one 
another,  had  become  so  intimate,  that  we  talked  of 
parting  even  as  we  parted  with  a  sense  of  incredible 
remoteness.  We  went  together  up  over  the  cliffs,  and 
to  a  place  where  they  fall  towards  the  sea,  past  the 
white,  quaint-lanterned  lighthouses  of  the  South  Fore- 


442      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

land.  There,  in  a  kind  of  niche  below  the  crest,  we 
sat  talking.  It  was  a  spacious  day,  serenely  blue  and 
warm,  and  on  the  wrinkled  water  remotely  below  a  black 
tender  and  six  hooded  submarines  came  presently,  and 
engaged  in  mysterious  manreuvres.  Shrieking  gulls 
and  chattering  jackdaws  circled  over  us  and  below  us, 
and  dived  and  swooped;  and  a  skerry  of  weedy,  fallen 
chalk  appeared,  and  gradually  disappeared  again,  as 
the  tide  fell  and  rose. 

We  talked  and  thought  that  afternoon  on  every  as- 
pect of  our  relations.  It  seems  to  me  now  we  talked  so 
wide  and  far  that  scarcely  an  issue  in  the  life  between 
man  and  woman  can  arise  that  we  did  not  at  least  touch 
upon.  Lying  there  at  Isabel's  feet,  I  have  become  for 
myself  a  symbol  of  all  this  world-wide  problem  between 
duty  and  conscious,  passionate  love  the  world  has  still 
to  solve.  Because  it  isn't  solved;  there's  a  wrong  in 
it  either  way.  .  .  .  The  sky,  the  wide  horizon,  seemed 
to  lift  us  out  of  ourselves  until  we  were  something 
representative  and  general.  She  was  womanhood  be- 
come articulate,  talking  to  her  lover. 

"  I  ought,"  I  said,  "  never  to  have  loved  you." 

"  It  wasn't  a  thing  planned/'  she  said. 

"  I  ought  never  to  have  let  our  talk  slip  to  that, 
never  to  have  turned  back  from  America." 

"  I'm  glad  we  did  it,"  she  said.  "  Don't  think  I 
repent." 

I  looked  at  her. 

"  I  will  never  repent,"  she  said.  "  Never ! "  as 
though  she  clung  to  her  life  in  saying  it. 

I  remember  we  talked  for  a  long  time  of  divorce. 
It  seemed  to  us  then,  and  it  seems  to  us  still,  that  it 
ought  to  have  been  possible  for  Margaret  to  divorce 
me,  and  for  me  to  marry  without  the  scandalous  and 
ugly  publicity,  the  taint  and  ostracism  that  follow  such 
a  readjustment.  We  went  on  to  the  whole  perplexing 


THE     IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION     443 

riddle  of  marriage.  We  criticised  the  current  code, 
how  muddled  and  conventionalised  it  had  become,  how 
modified  by  subterfuges  and  concealments  and  new 
necessities,  and  the  increasing  freedom  of  women.  "  It's 
all  like  Bromstead  when  the  building  came,"  I  said; 
for  I  had  often  talked  to  her  of  that  early  impression 
of  purpose  dissolving  again  into  chaotic  forces. 
"  There  is  no  clear  right  in  the  world  any  more.  The 
world  is  Byzantine.  The  justest  man  to-day  must 
practise  a  tainted  goodness." 

These  questions  need  discussion — a  magnificent 
frankness  of  discussion — if  any  standards  are  again  to 
establish  an  effective  hold  upon  educated  people.  Dis- 
cretions, as  I  have  said  already,  will  never  hold  any  one 
worth  holding — longer  than  they  held  us.  Against 
every  "  shalt  not "  there  must  be  a  "  why  not "  plainly 
put, — the  "  why  not  "  largest  and  plainest,  the  law 
deduced  from  its  purpose.  '  You  and  I,  Isabel,"  I 
said,  "  have  always  been  a  little  disregardful  of  duty, 
partly  at  least  because  the  idea  of  duty  comes  to  us 
so  ill-clad.  Oh!  I  know  there's  an  extravagant  insub- 
ordinate strain  in  us,  but  that  wasn't  all.  I  wish  hum- 
bugs would  leave  duty  alone.  I  wish  all  duty  wasn't 
covered  with  slime.  That's  where  the  real  mischief 
comes  in.  Passion  can  always  contrive  to  clothe  itself 
in  beauty,  strips  itself  splendid.  That  carried  us. 
But  for  all  its  mean  associations  there  is  this  duty.  .  .  ." 

"  Don't  we  come  'rather  late  to  it?  " 

"  Not  so  late  that  it  won't  be  atrociously  hard 
to  do." 

"  It's  queer  to  think  of  now,"  said  Isabel.  "  Who 
could  believe  we  did  all  we  have  done  honestly?  Well, 
in  a  manner  honestly.  Who  could  believe  we  thought 
this  might  be  hidden?  Who  could  trace  it  all  step  by 
step  from  the  time  when  we  found  that  a  certain  bold- 
ness in  our  talk  was  pleasing?  We  talked  of  love.  .  .  . 


444      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

Master,  there's  not  much  for  us  to  do  in  the  way  of 
Apologia  that  any  one  will  credit.  And  yet  if  it  were 
possible  to  tell  the  very  heart  of  our  story.  .  .  . 

"  Does  Margaret  really  want  to  go  on  with  you  ?  " 
she  asked — "  shield  you — knowing  of  ...  this?  " 

"I'm  certain.  I  don't  understand — just  as  I  don't 
understand  Shoesmith,  but  she  does.  These  people 
walk  on  solid  ground  which  is  just  thin  air  to  us. 
They've  got  something  we  haven't  got.  Assurances  $ 
I  wonder."  .  .  . 

Then  it  was,  or  later,  we  talked  of  Shoesmith,  and 
what  her  life  might  be  with  him. 

"  He's  good,"  she  said ;  "  he's  kindly.  He's  every- 
thing but  magic.  He's  the  very  image  of  the  decent, 
sober,  honourable  life.  You  can't  say  a  thing  against 
him  or  I — except  that  something — something  in  his 
imagination,  something  in  the  tone  of  his  voice — fails 
for  me.  Why  don't  I  love  him? — he's  a  better  man 
than  you!  Why  don't  you?  Is  he  a  better  man  than 
you?  He's  usage,  he's  honour,  he's  the  right  thing, 
he's  the  breed  and  the  tradition, — a  gentleman.  You're 
your  erring,  incalculable  self.  I  suppose  we  women  will 
trust  this  sort  and  love  your  sort  to  the  very  end  of 
time.  .  .  ." 

We  lay  side  by  side  and  nibbled  at  grass  stalks  as 
we  talked.  It  seemed  enormously  unreasonable  to  us 
that  two  people  who  had  come  to  the  pitch  of  easy 
and  confident  affection  and  happiness  that  held  between 
us  should  be  obliged  to  part  and  shun  one  another,  or 
murder  half  the  substance  of  their  lives.  We  felt 
ourselves  crushed  and  beaten  by  an  indiscriminating 
machine  which  destroys  happiness  in  the  service  of 
jealousy.  "  The  mass  of  people  don't  feel  these  things 
in  quite  the  same  manner  as  we  feel  them,"  she  said. 
"  Is  it  because  they're  different  in  grain,  or  educated 
out  of  some  primitive  instinct  ?  " 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    44,5 

"  It's  because  we've  explored  love  a  little,  and  they 
know  no  more  than  the  gateway,"  I  said.  "  Lust  and 
then  jealousy;  their  simple  conception — and  we  have 
gone  past  all  that  and  wandered  hand  in  hand.  .  .  ." 

I  remember  that  for  a  time  we  watched  two  of  that 
larger  sort  of  gull,  whose  wings  are  brownish-white, 
circle  and  hover  against  the  blue.  And  then  we  lay 
and  looked  at  a  band  of  water  mirror  clear  far  out  to 
sea,  and  wondered  why  the  breeze  that  rippled  all  the 
rest  should  leave  it  so  serene. 

"  And  in  this  State  of  ours,"  I  resumed. 

"Eh!"  said  Isabel,  rolling  over  into  a  sitting 
posture  and  looking  out  at  the  horizon.  "Let's  talk 
no  more  of  things  we  can  never  see.  Talk  to  me  of 
the  work  you  are  doing  and  all  we  shall  do — after  we 
have  parted.  We've  said  too  little  of  that.  We've 
had  our  red  life,  and  it's  over.  Thank  Heaven! — 
though  we  stole  it!  Talk  about  your  work,  dear,  and 
the  things  we'll  go  on  doing — just  as  though  we  were 
still  together.  We'll  still  be  together  in  a  sense — 
through  all  these  things  we  have  in  common." 

And  so  we  talked  of  politics  and  our  outlook. 
We  were  interested  to  the  pitch  of  self-forgetfulness. 
We  weighed  persons  and  forces,  discussed  the  probabili- 
ties of  the  next  general  election,  the  steady  drift  of 
public  opinion  in  the  north  and  west  away  from 
Liberalism  towards  us.  It  was  very  manifest  that  in 
spite  of  Wardenham  and  the  Expurgator,  we  should 
come  into  the  new  Government  strongly.  The  party 
had  no  one  else,  all  the  young  men  were  formally  or 
informally  with  us;  Esmeer  would  have  office,  Lord 
Tarvrille,  I  ...  and  very  probably  there  would  be 
something  for  Shoesmith.  "  And  for  my  own  part,"  I 
said,  "  I  count  on  backing  on  the  Liberal  side.  For 
the  last  two  years  we've  been  forcing  competition  in 
constructive  legislation  between  the  parties.  The 


446      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

Liberals  have  not  been  long  in  following  up  our 
Endowment  of  Motherhood  lead.  They'll  have  to  give 
votes  and  lip  service  anyhow.  Half  the  readers  of  the 
Blue  Weekly,  they  say,  are  Liberals.  .  .  . 

"  I  remember  talking  about  things  of  this  sort  with 
old  Willersley,"  I  said,  "  ever  so  many  years  ago.  It 
was  some  place  near  Locarno,  and  we  looked  down  the 
lake  that  shone  weltering — just  as  now  we  look  over 
the  sea.  And  then  we  dreamt  in  an  indistinct  feature- 
less way  of  all  that  you  and  I  are  doing  now." 

"  I !  "  said  Isabel,  and  laughed. 

"  Well,  of  some  such  thing,"  I  said,  and  remained 
for  awhile  silent,  thinking  of  Locarno. 

I  recalled  once  more  the  largeness,  the  release  from 
small  personal  things  that  I  had  felt  in  my  youth; 
statecraft  became  real  and  wonderful  again  with  the 
memory,  the  gigantic  handling  of  gigantic  problems. 
I  began  to  talk  out  my  thoughts,  sitting  up  beside  her, 
as  I  could  never  talk  of  them  to  any  one  bat  Isabel; 
began  to  recover  again  the  purpose  that  lay  under  all 
my  political  ambitions  and  adjustments  and  antici- 
pations. I  saw  the  State,  splendid  and  wide  as  I  had 
seen  it  in  that  first  travel  of  mine,  but  now  it  was  no 
mere  distant  prospect  of  spires  and  pinnacles,  but 
populous  with  fine-trained,  bold-thinking,  bold-doing 
people.  It  was  as  if  I  had  forgotten  for  a  long  time 
and  now  remembered  with  amazement. 

At  first,  I  told  her,  I  had  been  altogether  at  a  loss 
how  I  could  do  anything  to  battle  against  the  aimless 
muddle  of  our  world;  I  had  wanted  a  clue — until  she 
had  come  into  my  life  questioning,  suggesting,  uncon- 
sciously illuminating.  "  But  I  have  done  nothing," 
she  protested.  I  declared  she  had  done  everything  in 
growing  to  education  under  my  eyes,  in  reflecting  again 
upon  all  the  processes  that  had  made  myself,  so  that 
instead  of  abstractions  and  blue-books  and  bills  and 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    447 

devices,  I  had  realised  the  world  of  mankind  as  a 
crowd  needing  before  all  things  fine  women  and 
men.  We'd  spoilt  ourselves  in  learning  that,  but 
anyhow  we  had  our  lesson.  Before  her  I  was  in  a 
nineteenth-century  darkness,  dealing  with  the  nation 
as  if  it  were  a  crowd  of  selfish  men,  forgetful  of 
women  and  children  and  that  shy  wild  thing  in  the 
hearts  of  men,  love,  which  must  be  drawn  upon  as 
it  has  never  been  drawn  upon  before,  if  the  State  is 
to  live.  I  saw  now  how  it  is  possible  to  bring  the 
loose  factors  of  a  great  realm  together,  to  create  a 
mind  of  literature  and  thought  in  it,  and  the  expression 
of  a  purpose  to  make  it  self-conscious  and  fine.  I  had 
it  all  clear  before  me,  so  that  at  a  score  of  points  I 
could  presently  begin.  The  Blue  Weekly  was  a  centre 
of  force.  Already  we  had  given  Imperialism  a  criticism, 
and  leavened  half  the  press  from  our  columns.  Our 
movement  consolidated  and  spread.  We  should 
presently  come  into  power.  Everything  moved  towards 
our  hands.  We  should  be  able  to  get  at  the  schools, 
the  services,  the  universities,  the  church;  enormously 
increase  the  endowment  of  research,  and  organise  what 
was  sorely  wanted,  a  criticism  of  research;  contrive  a 
closer  contact  between  the  press  and  creative  intellectual 
life ;  foster  literature,  clarify,  strengthen  the  public  con- 
sciousness, develop  social  organisation  and  a  sense  of  the 
State.  Men  were  coming  to  us  every  day,  brilliant 
young  peers  like  Lord  Dentonhill,  writers  like  Carnot 
and  Cresswell.  It  filled  me  with  pride  to  win  such  men. 
"  We  stand  for  so  much  more  than  we  seem  to  stand 
for/'  I  said.  I  opened  my  heart  to  her,  so  freely 
that  I  hesitate  to  open  my  heart  even  to  the 
reader,  telling  of  projects  and  ambitions  I  cher- 
ished, of  my  consciousness  of  great  powers  and 
widening  opportunities.  .  .  . 
Isabel  watched  me  as  I  talked. 


448      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

She  too,  I  think,  had  forgotten  these  things  for  a 
while.  For  it  is  curious  and  I  think  a  very  signifi- 
cant thing  that  since  we  had  become  lovers,  we  had 
talked  very  little  of  the  broader  things  that  had  once 
so  strongly  gripped  our  imaginations. 

"  It's  good/'  I  said,  "  to  talk  like  this  to  you,  to  get 
back  to  youth  and  great  ambitions  with  you.  There 
have  been  times  lately  when  politics  has  seemed  the 
pettiest  game  played  with  mean  tools  for  mean  ends — 
and  none  the  less  so  that  the  happiness  of  three  hundred 
million  people  might  be  touched  by  our  follies.  I  talk 
to  no  one  else  like  this.  .  .  .  And  now  I  think  of  part- 
ing, I  think  but  of  how  much  more  I  might  have  talked 
to  you."  .  .  . 

Things  drew  to  an  end  at  last,  but  after  we  had 
spoken  of  a  thousand  things. 

"We've  talked  away  our  last  half  day,"  I  said, 
staring  over  my  shoulder  at  the  blazing  sunset  sky 
behind  us.  "  Dear,  it's  been  the  last  day  of  our  lives 
for  us.  ...  It  doesn't  seem  like  the  last  day  of  our 
lives.  Or  any  day." 

"I  wonder  how  it  will  feel?  "  said  Isabel. 

"  It  will  be  very  strange  at  first — not  to  be  able  to 
tell  you  things." 

"  I've  a  superstition  that  after — after  we've  parted — 
if  ever  I  go  into  my  room  and  talk,  you'll  hear.  You'll 
be — somewhere." 

"  I  shall  be  in  the  world— yes." 

"  I  don't  feel  as  though  these  days  ahead  were  real. 
Here  we  are,  here  we  remain." 

"Yes,  I  feel  that.  As  though  you  and  I  were  two 
immortals,  who  didn't  live  in  time  and  space  at  all, 
who  never  met,  who  couldn't  part,  and  here  we  lie  on 
Olympus.  And  those  two  poor  creatures  who  did 
meet,  poor  little  Richard  Remington  and  Isabel  Rivers, 
who  met  and  loved  too  much  and  had  to  part,  they  part 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    449 

and  go  their  ways,  and  we  lie  here  and  watch  them, 
you  and  I.  She'll  cry,  poor  dear." 

"  She'll  cry.     She's  crying  now !  " 

"Poor  little  beasts!  I  think  he'll  cry  too.  He 
winces.  He  could — for  tuppence.  I  didn't  know  he 
had  lachrymal  glands  at  all  until  a  little  while  ago. 
I  suppose  all  love  is  hysterical — and  a  little  foolish. 
Poor  mites!  Silly  little  pitiful  creatures!  How  we 
have  blundered!  Think  how  we  must  look  to  God! 
Well,  we'll  pity  them,  and  then  we'll  inspire  him  to 
stiffen  up  again — and  do  as  we've  determined  he  shall 
do.  We'll  see  it  through, — we  who  lie  here  on  the 
cliff.  They'll  be  mean  at  times,  and  horrid  at  times; 
we  know  them!  Do  you  see  her,  a  poor  little  fine 
lady  in  a  great  house, — she  sometimes  goes  to  her  room 
and  writes." 

"  She  writes  for  his  Blue  Weekly  still." 

"  Yes.  Sometimes — I  hope.  And  he's  there  in  the 
office  with  a  bit  of  her  copy  in  his  hand." 

"  Is  it  as  good  as  if  she  still  talked  it  over  with  him 
before  she  wrote  it  ?  Is  it  ?  " 

"  Better,  I  think.  Let's  play  it's  better — anyhow. 
It  may  be  that  talking  over  was  rather  mixed  with 
love-making.  After  all,  love-making  is  joy  rather  than 
magic.  Don't  let's  pretend  about  that  even.  .  .  .  Let's 
go  on  watching  him.  (I  don't  see  why  her  writing 
shouldn't  be  better.  Indeed  I  don't.)  See!  There 
he  goes  down  along  the  Embankment  to  Westminster 
just  like  a  real  man,  for  all  that  he's  smaller  than  a 
grain  of  dust.  What  is  running  round  inside  that 
speck  of  a  head  of  his?  Look  at  him  going  past  the 
policemen,  specks  too — selected  large  ones  from  the 
country.  I  think  he's  going  to  dinner  with  the  Speaker 
— some  old  thing  like  that.  Is  his  face  harder  or 
commoner  or  stronger? — I  can't  quite  see.  .  .  .  And 
now  he's  up  and  speaking  in  the  House.  Hope  he'll 


450      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

hold  on  to  the  thread.  He'll  have  to  plan  his 
speeches  to  the  very  end  of  his  days — and  learn  the 
headings." 

"  Isn't  she  up  in  the  women's  gallery  to  hear  him?*' 

"  No.     Unless  it's  by  accident." 

"  She's  there,"  she  said. 

"  Well,  by  accident  it  happens.  Not  too  many  acci- 
dents, Isabel.  Never  any  more  adventures  for  us,  dear, 
now.  No!  .  .  .  They  play  the  game,  you  know. 
They've  begun  late,  but  now  they've  got  to.  You  see 
it's  not  so  very  hard  for  them  since  you  and  I,  my  dear, 
are  here  always,  always  faithfully  here  on  this  warm 
cliff  of  love  accomplished,  watching  and  helping  them 
under  high  heaven.  It  isn't  so  very  hard.  Rather  good 
in  some  ways.  Some  people  have  to  be  broken  a  little. 
Can  you  see  Altiora  down  there,  by  any  chance?" 

"  She's  too  little  to  be  seen/'  she  said. 

"  Can  you  see  the  sins  they  once  committed  ?  " 

"  I  can  only  see  you  here  beside  me,  dear — for  ever. 
For  all  my  life,  dear,  till  I  die.  Was  that— the 
sin?"  .  .  . 

I  took  her  to  the  station,  and  after  she  had  gone 
I  was  to  drive  to  Dover,  and  cross  to  Calais  by  the 
night  boat.  I  couldn't,  I  felt,  return  to  London.  We 
walked  over  the  crest  and  down  to  the  little  station 
of  Martin  Mill  side  by  side,  talking  at  first  in  broken 
fragments,  for  the  most  part  of  unimportant  things. 

"  None  of  this,"  she  said  abruptly,  "  seems  in  the 
slightest  degree  real  to  me.  I've  got  no  sense  of  things 
ending." 

"We're  parting,"  I  said. 

"We're  parting — as  people  part  in  a  play.  It's  dis- 
tressing. But  I  don't  feel  as  though  you  and  I  were 
really  never  to  see  each  other  again  for  years.  Do 
you?  " 

I  thought.    "  No,"  I  said. 


THE    IMPOSSIBLE    POSITION    451 

"  After  we've  parted  I  shall  look  to  talk  it  over  with 
you/' 

"  So  shall  I." 

"  That's  absurd." 

"  Absurd." 

"  I  feel  as  if  you'd  always  be  there,  just  about  where 
you  are  now.  Invisible  perhaps,  but  there.  We've 
spent  so  much  of  our  lives  joggling  elbows."  .  .  . 

"  Yes.  Yes.  I  don't  in  the  least  realise  it.  I  sup- 
pose I  shall  begin  to  when  the  train  goes  out  of  the 
station.  Are  we  wanting  in  imagination,  Isabel?  " 

"  I  don't  know.  We've  always  assumed  it  was  the 
other  way  about." 

"  Even  when  the  train  goes  out  of  the  station ! 

I've  seen  you  into  so  many  trains." 

"  I  shall  go  on  thinking  of  things  to  say  to  you — 
things  to  put  in  your  letters.  For  years  to  come.  How 
can  I  ever  stop  thinking  in  that  way  now?  We've  got 
into  each  other's  brains." 

"It  isn't  real,"  I  said;  "nothing  is  real.  The 
world's  no  more  than  a  fantastic  dream.  Why  are  we 
parting,  Isabel?  " 

"  I  don't  know.  It  seems  now  supremely  silly.  I 
suppose  we  have  to.  Can't  we  meet? — don't  you  think 
we  shall  meet  even  in  dreams?  " 

"  We'll  meet  a  thousand  times  in  dreams,"  I  said. 

"  I  wish  we  could  dream  at  the  same  time,"  said 
Isabel.  ..."  Dream  walks.  I  can't  believe,  dear,  I 
shall  never  have  a  walk  with  you  again." 

"  If  I'd  stayed  six  months  in  America/'  I  said,  "  we 
might  have  walked  long  walks  and  talked  long  talks 
for  all  our  lives." 

"Not  in  a  world  of  Baileys,"  said  Isabel.  "And 
anyhow " 

She  stopped  short.     I  looked  interrogation. 

"  We've  loved,"  she  said. 


452      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

I  took  her  ticket,  saw  to  her  luggage,  and  stood  by 
the  door  of  the  compartment.  "  Good-bye/'  I  said  a 
little  stiffly,  conscious  of  the  people  upon  the  platform. 
She  bent  above  me,  white  and  dusky,  looking  at  me 
very  steadfastly. 

"  Come  here,"  she  whispered.  "  Never  mind  the 
porters.  What  can  they  know?  Just  one  time  more 
—I  must." 

She  rested  her  hand  against  the  door  of  the  carriage 
and  bent  down  upon  me,  and  put  her  cold,  moist  lips 
to  mine. 


CHAPTER    THE    THIRD 

THE    BREAKING    POINT 

§  1 

AND  then  we  broke  down.  We  broke  our  faith  with 
both  Margaret  and  Shoesmith,  flung  career  and  duty 
out  of  our  lives,  and  went  away  together. 

It  is  only  now,  almost  a  year  after  these  events,  that 
I  can  begin  to  see  what  happened  to  me.  At  the  time 
it  seemed  to  me  I  was  a  rational,  responsible  creature, 
but  indeed  I  had  not  parted  from  her  two  days  before 
I  became  a  monomaniac  to  whom  nothing  could  matter 
but  Isabel.  Every  truth  had  to  be  squared  to  that 
obsession,  every  duty.  It  astounds  me  to  think  how  I 
forgot  Margaret,  forgot  my  work,  forgot  everything 
but  that  we  two  were  parted.  I  still  believe  that  with 
better  chances  we  might  have  escaped  the  consequences 
of  the  emotional  storm  that  presently  seized  us  both. 
But  we  had  no  foresight  of  that,  and  no  preparation 
for  it,  and  our  circumstances  betrayed  us.  It  was 
partly  Shoesmith's  unwisdom  in  delaying  his  marriage 
until  after  the  end  of  the  session — partly  my  own 
amazing  folly  in  returning  within  four  days  to  West- 
minster. But  we  were  all  of  us  intent  upon  the  defeat 
of  scandal  and  the  complete  restoration  of  appearances. 
It  seemed  necessary  that  Shoesmith's  marriage  should 
not  seem  to  be  hurried,  still  more  necessary  that  I 
should  not  vanish  inexplicably.  I  had  to  be  visible 
with  Margaret  in  London  just  as  much  as  possible;  we 
went  to  restaurants,  we  visited  the  theatre;  we  could 
even  contemplate  the  possibility  of  my  presence  at  the 

453 


454      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

wedding.  For  that,  however,  we  had  schemed  a  week* 
end  visit  to  Wales,  and  a  fictitious  sprained  ankle  at 
the  last  moment  which  would  justify  my  absence.  .  .  . 

I  cannot  convey  to  you  the  intolerable  wretchedness 
and  rebellion  of  my  separation  from  Isabel.  It  seemed 
that  in  the  past  two  years  all  my  thoughts  had  spun 
commisures  to  Isabel's  brain  and  I  could  think  of  noth- 
ing that  did  not  lead  me  surely  to  the  need  of  the  one 
intimate  I  had  found  in  the  world.  I  came  back  to 
the  House  and  the  office  and  my  home,  I  filled  all  my 
days  with  appointments  and  duty,  and  it  did  not  save 
me  in  the  least  from  a  lonely  emptiness  such  as  I  had 
never  felt  before  in  all  my  life.  I  had  little  sleep.  In 
the  daytime  I  did  a  hundred  things,  I  even  spoke  in 
the  House  on  two  occasions,  and  by  my  own  low  stand- 
ards spoke  well,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  was  going 
about  in  my  own  brain  like  a  hushed  survivor  in  a  house 
whose  owner  lies  dead  upstairs. 

I  came  to  a  crisis  after  that  wild  dinner  of 
Tarvrille's.  Something  in  that  stripped  my  soul  bare. 

It  was  an  occasion  made  absurd  and  strange  by  the 
odd  accident  that  the  house  caught  fire  upstairs  while 
we  were  dining  below.  It  was  a  men's  dinner — "  A 
dinner  of  all  sorts,"  said  Tarvrille,  when  he  invited 
me ;  "  everything  from  Evesham  and  Gane  to  Wilkins 
the  author,  and  Heaven  knows  what  will  happen ! "  I 
remember  that  afterwards  Tarvrille  was  accused  of 
having  planned  the  fire  to  make  his  dinner  a  marvel 
and  a  memory.  It  was  indeed  a  wonderful  occasion, 
and  I  suppose  if  I  had  not  been  altogether  drenched 
in  misery,  I  should  have  found  the  same  wild  amuse- 
ment in  it  that  glowed  in  all  the  others.  There  were 
one  or  two  university  dons,  Lord  George  Fester,  the 
racing  man,  Panmure,  the  artist,  two  or  three  big  City 
men,  Weston  Massinghay  and  another  prominent  Lib- 
eral whose  name  I  can't  remember,  the  three  men 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      455 

Tarvrille  had  promised  and  Esmeer,  Lord  Wrassleton, 
Waulsort,  the  member  for  Monckton,  Neal  and  several 
others.  We  began  a  little  coldly,  with  duologues,  but 
the  conversation  was  already  becoming  general — so  far 
as  such  a  long  table  permitted — when  the  fire  asserted 
itself. 

It  asserted  itself  first  as  a  penetrating  and  emphatic 
smell  of  burning  rubber, — it  was  caused  by  the  fusing 
of  an  electric  wire.  The  reek  forced  its  way  into  the 
discussion  of  the  Pekin  massacres  that  had  sprung  up 
between  Evesham,  Waulsort,  and  the  others  at  the  end 
of  the  table.  "  Something  burning,"  said  the  man  next 
to  me. 

"  Something  must  be  burning,"  said  Panmure. 

Tarvrille  hated  undignified  interruptions.  He  had 
a  particularly  imperturbable  butler  with  a  cadaverous 
sad  face  and  an  eye  of  rigid  disapproval.  He  spoke  to 
this  individual  over  his  shoulder.  "  Just  see,  will  you," 
he  said,  and  caught  up  the  pause  in  the  talk  to  his  left. 

Wilkins  was  asking  questions,  and  I,  too,  was  curi- 
ous. The  story  of  the  siege  of  the  Legations  in  China 
in  the  year  1900  and  all  that  followed  upon  that,  is 
just  one  of  those  disturbing  interludes  in  history  that 
refuse  to  join  on  to  that  general  scheme  of  protesta- 
tion by  which  civilisation  is  maintained.  It  is  a  break 
in  the  general  flow  of  experience  as  disconcerting  to 
statecraft  as  the  robbery  of  my  knife  and  the  scuffle 
that  followed  it  had  been  to  me  when  I  was  a  boy  at 
Penge.  It  is  like  a  tear  in  a  curtain  revealing  quite 
unexpected  backgrounds.  I  had  never  given  the  busi- 
ness a  thought  for  years;  now  this  talk  brought  back  a 
string  of  pictures  to  my  mind;  how  the  reliefs  arrived 
and  the  plundering  began,  how  section  after  section 
of  the  International  Army  was  drawn  into  murder  and 
pillage,  how  the  infection  spread  upward  until  the 
wives  of  Ministers  were  busy  looting,  and  the  very  sen- 


456      THE    NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

tinels  stripped  and  crawled  like  snakes  into  the  Palace 
they  were  set  to  guard.  It  did  not  stop  at  robbery, 
men  were  murdered,  women,  being  plundered,  were  out- 
raged, children  were  butchered,  strong  men  had  found 
themselves  with  arms  in  a  lawless,  defenceless  city,  and 
this  had  followed.  Now  it  was  all  recalled. 

"  Respectable  ladies  addicted  to  district  visiting  at 
home  were  as  bad  as  any  one,"  said  Panmure.  "  Glaze- 
brook  told  me  of  one — flushed  like  a  woman  at  a  bar- 
gain sale,  he  said — and  when  he  pointed  out  to  her 
that  the  silk  she'd  got  was  bloodstained,  she  just  said, 
'  Oh,  bother !  '  and  threw  it  aside  and  went  back.  .  .  ." 

We  became  aware  that  Tarvrille's  butler  had  re- 
turned. We  tried  not  to  seem  to  listen. 

"  Beg  pardon,  m'lord,"  he  said.  "  The  house  is  on 
fire,  m'lord." 

"  Upstairs,  m'lord." 

"  Just  overhead,  m'lord." 

"  The  maids  are  throwing  water,  m'lord,  and  I've  tel- 
ephoned fire." 

"  No,  m'lord,  no  immediate  danger." 

"  It's  all  right,"  said  Tarvrille  to  the  table  generally. 
"  Go  on !  It's  not  a  general  conflagration,  and  the  fire 
brigade  won't  be  five  minutes.  Don't  see  that  it's  our 
affair.  The  stuff's  insured.  They  say  old  Lady  Pasker- 
shortly  was  dreadful.  Like  a  harpy.  The  Dowager 
Empress  had  shown  her  some  little  things  of  hers.  Pet 
things — hidden  away.  Susan  went  straight  for  them — 
used  to  take  an  umbrella  for  the  silks.  Born  shop- 
lifter." 

It  was  evident  he  didn't  want  his  dinner  spoilt,  and 
we  played  up  loyally. 

"  This  is  recorded  history,"  said  Wilkins, — "  prac- 
tically. It  makes  one  wonder  about  unrecorded  history. 
In  India,  for  example." 

But  nobody  touched  that. 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      457 

"  Thompson/'  said  Tarvrille  to  the  imperturbable 
butler,  and  indicating  the  table  generally,  "  champagne. 
Champagne.  Keep  it  going." 

"  M'lord,"  and  Thompson  marshalled  his  assistants. 

Some  man  I  didn't  know  began  to  remember  things 
about  Mandalay.  "  It's  queer,"  he  said,  "  how  people 
break  out  at  times ; "  and  told  his  story  of  an  army 
doctor,  brave,  public-spirited,  and,  as  it  happened, 
deeply  religious,  who  was  caught  one  evening  by  the 
excitement  of  plundering — and  stole  and  hid,  twisted 
the  wrist  of  a  boy  until  it  broke,  and  was  afterwards 
overcome  by  wild  remorse. 

I  watched  Evesham  listening  intently.  "Strange," 
he  said,  "  very  strange.  We  are  such  stuff  as  thieves 
are  made  of.  And  in  China,  too,  they  murdered  people 
— for  the  sake  of  murdering.  Apart,  so  to  speak,  from 
mercenary  considerations.  I'm  afraid  there's  no  doubt 
of  it  in  certain  cases.  No  doubt  at  all.  Young  soldiers 
— fresh  from  German  high  schools  and  English  homes !  " 

"  Did  our  people  ?  "  asked  some  patriot. 

"  Not  so  much.  But  I'm  afraid  there  were  cases. 
.  .  .  Some  of  the  Indian  troops  were  pretty  bad." 

Gane  picked  up  the  tale  with  confirmations. 

It  is  all  printed  in  the  vividest  way  as  a  picture 
upon  my  memory,  so  that  were  I  a  painter  I  think  I 
could  give  the  deep  rich  browns  and  warm  greys  beyond 
the  brightly  lit  table,  the  various  distinguished  faces, 
strongly  illuminated,  interested  and  keen,  above  the 
black  and  white  of  evening  dress,  the  alert  men- 
servants  with  their  heavier,  clean-shaved  faces  indis- 
tinctly seen  in  the  dimness  behind.  Then  this  was 
coloured  emotionally  for  me  by  my  aching  sense  of 
loss  and  sacrifice,  and  by  the  chance  trend  of  our  talk 
to  the  breaches  and  unrealities  of  the  civilised  scheme. 
We  seemed  a  little  transitory  circle  of  light  in  a  uni- 
verse of  darkness  and  violence;  an  effect  to  which  the 


458      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

diminishing  smell  of  burning  rubber,  the  trampling  of 
feet  overhead,  the  swish  of  water,  added  enormously. 
Everybody — unless,   perhaps,    it   was    Evesham — drank 
rather  carelessly  because  of  the  suppressed  excitement 
of  our  situation,  and  talked  the  louder  and  more  freely. 
"But  what  a  flimsy  thing  our  civilisation  is!"  said 
Evesham;  "  a  mere  thin  net  of  habits  and  associations ! " 
"  I  suppose  those  men  came  back,"  said  Wilkins. 
"  Lady   Paskershortly  did !  "   chuckled   Evesham. 
"  How  do  they  fit  it  in  with  the  rest  of  their  lives?  " 
Wilkins  speculated.     "I  suppose  there's  Pekin-stained 
police  officers,  Pekin-stained  J.F.'s— trying  petty  pil- 
ferers in  the  severest  manner."  .  .  . 

Then  for  a  time  things  became  preposterous.     There 
was  a  sudden  cascade  of  water  by  the  fireplace,  and  then 
absurdly  the  ceiling  began  to  rain  upon  us,  first  at  this 
point  and  then  that.     "  My  new  suit ! "  cried  some  one. 
"  Perrrrrr-up  pe-rr  " — a  new  vertical  line  of  blackened 
water  would  establish  itself  and  form  a  spreading  pool 
upon    the    gleaming    cloth.     The    men    nearest    would 
arrange  catchment   areas   of  plates   and   flower   bowls. 
"  Draw  up !  "   said   Tarvrille,   "  draw  up.      That's   the 
bad  end  of  the  table!"     He  turned  to  the  imperturb- 
able butler.     "Take  round  bath  towels,"  he  said;  and 
presently  the  men  behind  us   were   offering — with  in- 
flexible dignity— "  Port  wine,  Sir.     Bath  towel,  Sir!" 
Waulsort,    with    streaks    of    blackened    water    on    his 
forehead,  was  suddenly  reminded  of  a  wet  year  when 
he   had    followed   the    French    army   manoeuvres.      An 
animated    dispute    sprang   up   between   him    and    Neal 
about   the   relative   efficiency   of   the   new   French   and 
German  field  guns.     Wrassleton  joined  in  and  a  little 
drunken   shrivelled   Oxford   don   of   some   sort  with    a 
black-splashed  shirt  front  who  presently  silenced  them 
all  by  the  immensity  and  particularity  of  his  knowl- 
edge   of    field    artillery.      Then    the    talk    drifted    to 


THE    BREAKING   POINT      459 

Sedan  and  the  effect  of  dead  horses  upon  drinking- 
water,  which  brought  Wrassleton  and  Weston  Massing- 
hay  into  a  dispute  of  great  vigour  and  emphasis.  "  The 
trouble  in  South  Africa/'  said  Weston  Massinghay, 
"  wasn't  that  we  didn't  boil  our  water.  It  was  that  we 
didn't  boil  our  men.  The  Boers  drank  the  same  stuff 
we  did.  They  didn't  get  dysentery.  " 

That  argument  went  on  for  some  time.  I  was 
attacked  across  the  table  by  a  man  named  Burshort 
about  my  Endowment  of  Motherhood  schemes,  but  in 
the  gaps  of  that  debate  I  could  still  hear  Weston 
Massinghay  at  intervals  repeat  in  a  rather  thickened 
voice:  "  They  didn't  get  dysentery." 

I  think  Evesham  went  early.  The  rest  of  us  clustered 
more  and  more  closely  towards  the  drier  end  of  the 
room,  the  table  was  pushed  along,  and  the  area  beneath 
the  extinguished  conflagration  abandoned  to  a  tinkling, 
splashing  company  of  pots  and  pans  and  bowls  and 
baths.  Everybody  was  now  disposed  to  be  hilarious 
and  noisy,  to  say  startling  and  aggressive  things;  we 
must  have  sounded  a  queer  clamour  to  a  listener  in  the 
next  room.  The  devil  inspired  them  to  begin  baiting 
me.  "  Ours  isn't  the  Tory  party  any  more/'  said 
Burshort.  "  Remington  has  made  it  the  Obstetric 
Party." 

"  That's  good ! "  said  Weston  Massinghay,  with  all 
his  teeth  gleaming;  "  I  shall  use  that  against  you  in 
the  House !  " 

"  I  shall  denounce  you  for  abusing  private  confi- 
dences if  you  do,"  said  Tarvrille. 

"  Remington  wants  us  to  give  up  launching  Dread- 
noughts and  launch  babies  instead,"  Burshort  urged. 
"  For  the  price  of  one  Dreadnought ' 

The  little  shrivelled  don  who  had  been  omniscient 
about  guns  joined  in  the  baiting,  and  displayed  him- 
self a  venomous  creature.  Something  in  his  eyes  told 


460      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

me  he  knew  Isabel  and  hated  me  for  it.  "Love  ancf 
fine  thinking,"  he  began,  a  little  thickly,  and  knocking 
over  a  wine-glass  with  a  too  easy  gesture.  "  Love  and 
fine  thinking.  Two  things  don't  go  together.  No 
ph'losophy  worth  a  damn  ever  came  out  of  excesses  of 
love.  Salt  Lake  City — Piggott — Ag — Agapemone 
again — no  works  to  matter/* 

Everybody  laughed. 

"  Got  to  rec'nisp  these  facts/'  said  my  assailant. 
"  Love  and  fine  think'n  pretty  phrase — attractive. 
Suitable  for  p'litical  dec'rations.  Postcard,  Christmas, 
gilt  lets,  in  a  wreath  of  white  flow's.  Not  oth'wise 
valu'ble." 

I  made  some  remark,  I  forget  what,  but  he  over- 
bore me. 

"  Real  things  we  want  are  Hate — Hate  and  coarse 
think'n.  I  b'long  to  the  school  of  Mrs.  F's  Aunt " 

"  What  ?  "  said  some  one,  intent. 

"In  *  Little  Dorrit,'"  explained  Tarvrille;  "go  on!" 

"  Hate  a  fool,"  said  my  assailant. 

Tarvrille  glanced  at  me.  I  smiled  to  conceal  the  loss 
of  my  temper. 

"  Hate,"  said  the  little  man,  emphasising  his  point 
with  a  clumsy  fist.  "  Hate's  the  driving  force.  What's 
m'rality? — hate  of  rotten  goings  on.  What's  patriot- 
ism?— hate  of  int'loping  foreigners.  What's  Radical- 
ism?— hate  of  lords.  What's  Toryism? — hate  of 
disturbance.  It's  all  hate — hate  from  top  to  bottom 
Hate  of  a  mess.  Remington  owned  it  the  other  day, 
said  he  hated  a  mu'll.  There  you  are!  If  you  couldn't 
get  hate  into  an  election,  damn  it  (hie)  people  wou'n't 
poll.  Poll  for  love ! — no'  me !  " 

He  paused,  but  before  any  one  could  speak  he  had 
resumed. 

"  Then  this  about  fine  thinking.  Like  going  into  a 
bear  pit  armed  with  a  tagle — talgent — talgent  gal- 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      461 

v'nometer.  Like  going  to  fight  a  mad  dog'  with 
Shasepear  and  the  Bible.  Fine  thinking — wh'at  we 
want  is  the  thickes*  thinking  we  can  get.  Thinking 
that  stands  up  alone.  Taf  Reform  means  work  for  all, 
— thassort  of  thing." 

The  gentleman  from  Cambridge  paused.  "  You  a 
flag!"  he  said.  "I'd  as  soon  go  to  ba'ell  und'  wet 
tissue  paper !  " 

My  best  answer  on  the  spur  of  the  moment  was: 
"  The  Japanese  did."  Which  was  absurd. 

I  went  on  to  some  other  reply,  I  forget  exactly 
what,  and  the  talk  of  the  whole  table  drew  round  me. 
It  was  an  extraordinary  revelation  to  me.  Every  one 
was  unusually  careless  and  outspoken,  and  it  was  amaz- 
ing how  manifestly  they  echoed  the  feeling  of  this  old 
Tory  spokesman.  They  were  quite  friendly  to  me, 
they  regarded  me  and  the  Blue  Weekly  as  valuable 
party  assets  for  Toryism,  but  it  was  clear  they  attached 
no  more  importance  to  what  were  my  realities  than 
they  did  to  the  remarkable  therapeutic  claims  of  Mrs. 
Eddy.  They  were  flushed  and  amused,  perhaps  they 
went  a  little  too  far  in  their  resolves  to  draw  me,  but 
they  left  the  impression  on  my  mind  of  men  irrevocably 
set  upon  narrow  and  cynical  views  of  political  life. 
For  them  the  political  struggle  was  a  game,  whose 
counters  were  human  hate  and  human  credulity;  their 
real  aim  was  just  every  one's  aim,  the  preservation  of 
the  class  and  way  of  living  to  which  their  lives  were 
attuned.  They  did  not  know  how  tired  I  was,  how 
exhausted  mentally  and  morally,  nor  how  cruel  their 
convergent  attack  on  me  chanced  to  be.  But  my 
temper  gave  way,  I  became  tart  and  fierce,  perhaps  my 
replies  were  a  trifle  absurd,  and  Tarvrille,  with  that 
quick  eye  and  sympathy  of  his,  came  to  the  rescue. 
Then  for  a  time  I  sat  silent  and  drank  port  wine  while 
the  others  talked.  The  disorder  of  the  room,  the  still 


462      THE   NEW   MACHIAVEKLI 

dripping  ceiling,  the  noise,  the  displaced  ties  and 
crumpled  shirts  of  my  companions,  jarred  on  my  tor- 
mented nerves.  .  .  . 

It  was  long  past  midnight  when  we  dispersed.  I 
remember  Tarvrille  coming  with  me  into  the  hall,  and 
then  suggesting  we  should  go  upstairs  to  see  the 
damage.  A  manservant  carried  up  two  flickering 
candles  for  us.  One  end  of  the  room  was  gutted,  cur- 
tains, hangings,  several  chairs  and  tables  were  com- 
pletely burnt,  the  panelling  was  scorched  and  warped, 
three  smashed  windows  made  the  candles  flare  and 
gutter,  and  some  scraps  of  broken  china  still  lay  on 
the  puddled  floor. 

As  we  surveyed  this,  Lady  Tarvrille  appeared,  back 
from  some  party,  a  slender,  white-cloaked,  satin-footed 
figure  with  amazed  blue  eyes  beneath  her  golden  hair, 
I  remember  how  stupidly  we  laughed  at  her  surprise. 

§  2 

I  parted  from  Panmure  at  the  corner  of  Aldington 
Street,  and  went  my  way  alone.  But  I  did  not  go 
home,  I  turned  westward  and  walked  for  a  long  way, 
and  then  struck  northward  aimlessly.  I  was  too  miser- 
able to  go  to  my  house. 

I  wandered  about  that  night  like  a  man  who  has  dis- 
covered his  Gods  are  dead.  I  can  look  back  now  de- 
tached yet  sympathetic  upon  that  wild  confusion  of 
moods  and  impulses,  and  by  it  I  think  I  can  understand, 
oh!  half  the  wrongdoing  and  blundering  in  the  world. 

I  do  not  feel  now  the  logical  force  of  the  process 
that  must  have  convinced  me  then  that  I  had  made  my 
sacrifice  and  spent  my  strength  in  vain.  At  no  time 
had  I  been  under  any  illusion  that  the  Tory  party  had 
higher  ideals  than  any  other  party,  yet  it  came  to  me 
like  a  thing  newly  discovered  that  the  men  I  had  to 
work  with  had  for  the  most  part  no  such  dreams,  no 


THE    BREAKING   POINT      463 

sense  of  any  collective  purpose,  no  atom  of  the  faith  I 
held.  They  were  just  as  immediately  intent  upon 
personal  ends,  just  as  limited  by  habits  of  thought,  as 
the  men  in  any  other  group  or  party.  Perhaps  I  had 
slipped  unawares  for  a  time  into  the  delusions  of  a 
party  man — but  I  do  not  think  so. 

No,  it  was  the  mood  of  profound  despondency  that 
had  followed  upon  the  abrupt  cessation  of  my  familiar 
intercourse  with  Isabel,  that  gave  this  fact  that  had 
always  been  present  in  my  mind  its  quality  of 
devastating  revelation.  It  seemed  as  though  I  had 
never  seen  before  nor  suspected  the  stupendous  gap 
between  the  chaotic  aims,  the  routine,  the  conventional 
acquiescences,  the  vulgarisations  of  the  personal  life, 
and  that  clearly  conscious  development  and  service  of 
a  collective  thought  and  purpose  at  which  my  efforts 
aimed.  I  had  thought  them  but  a  little  way  apart, 
and  now  I  saw  they  were  separated  by  all  the  distance 
between  earth  and  heaven.  I  saw  now  in  myself  and 
every  one  around  me,  a  concentration  upon  interests 
close  at  hand,  an  inability  to  detach  oneself  from  the 
provocations,  tendernesses,  instinctive  hates,  dumb  lusts 
and  shy  timidities  that  touched  one  at  every  point; 
and,  save  for  rare  exalted  moments,  a  regardlessness  of 
broader  aims  and  remoter  possibilities  that  made  the 
white  passion  of  statecraft  seem  as  unearthly  and 
irrelevant  to  human  life  as  the  story  an  astronomer  will 
tell,  half  proven  but  altogether  incredible,  of  habitable 
planets  and  answering  intelligences,  suns'  distances 
uncounted  across  the  deep.  It  seemed  to  me  I  had! 
aspired  too  high  and  thought  too  far,  had  mocked  my 
own  littleness  by  presumption,  had  given  the  uttermotf 
dear  reality  of  life  for  a  theoriser's  dream. 

All  through  that  wandering  agony  of  mine  tha* 
night  a  dozen  threads  of  thought  interwove;  now  I 
was  a  soul  speaking  in  protest  to  God  against  a  task 


464      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

too  cold  and  high  for  it,  and  now  I  was  an  angry  man, 
scorned  and  pointed  upon,  who  had  let  life  cheat 
him  of  the  ultimate  pride  of  his  soul.  Now  I  was 
the  fool  of  ambition,  who  opened  his  box  of  gold  to 
find  blank  emptiness,  and  now  I  was  a  spinner  of  flimsy 
thoughts,  whose  web  tore  to  rags  at  a  touch.  I  realised 
for  the  first  time  how  much  I  had  come  to  depend  upon 
the  mind  and  faith  of  Isabel,  how  she  had  confirmed 
me  and  sustained  me,  how  little  strength  I  had  to  go 
on  with  our  purposes  now  that  she  had  vanished  from 
my  life.  She  had  been  the  incarnation  of  those  great 
abstractions,  the  saving  reality,  the  voice  that  answered 
back.  There  was  no  support  that  night  in  the  things 
that  had  been.  We  were  alone  together  on  the  cliff 
for  ever  more ! — that  was  very  pretty  in  its  way,  but  it 
had  no  truth  whatever  that  could  help  me  now,  no 
ounce  of  sustaining  value.  I  wanted  Isabel  that  night, 
no  sentiment  or  memory  of  her,  but  Isabel  alive, — to 
talk  to  me,  to  touch  me,  to  hold  me  together,  I 
wanted  unendurably  the  dusky  gentleness  of  her  pres- 
ence, the  consolation  of  her  voice. 

We  were  alone  together  on  the  cliff!  I  startled  a 
passing  cabman  into  interest  by  laughing  aloud  at  that 
magnificent  and  characteristic  sentimentality.  What 
a  lie  it  was,  and  how  satisfying  it  had  been!  That 
was  just  where  we  shouldn't  remain.  We  of  all  people 
had  no  distinction  from  that  humanity  whose  lot  is  to 
forget.  We  should  go  out  to  other  interests,  new  ex- 
periences, new  demands.  That  tall  and  intricate  fabric 
of  ambitious  understandings  we  had  built  up  together 
in  our  intimacy  would  be  the  first  to  go;  and  last  per- 
haps to  endure  with  us  would  be  a  few  gross  memories 
of  sights  and  sounds,  and  trivial  incidental  excite- 
ments. .  .  . 

I  had  a  curious  feeling  that  night  that  I  had  lost 
touch  with  life  for  a  long  time,  and  had  now  been 


THE    BREAKING   POINT      465 

reminded  of  its  quality.  That  infernal  little  don's 
parody  of  my  ruling  phrase,  "  Hate  and  coarse  think- 
ing," stuck  in  my  thoughts  like  a  poisoned  dart,  a  centre 
of  inflammation.  Just  as  a  man  who  is  debilitated 
has  no  longer  the  vitality  to  resist  an  infection,  so 
my  mind,  slackened  by  the  crisis  of  my  separation 
from  Isabel,  could  find  no  resistance  to  his  emphatic 
suggestion.  It  seemed  to  me  that  what  he  had  said  was 
overpoweringly  true,  not  only  of  contemporary  life,  but 
of  all  possible  human  life.  Love  is  the  rare  thing, 
the  treasured  thing;  you  lock  it  away  jealously  and 
watch,  and  well  you  may;  hate  and  aggression  and 
force  keep  the  streets  and  rule  the  world.  And  fine 
thinking  is,  in  the  rough  issues  of  life,  weak  thinking, 
is  a  balancing  indecisive  process,  discovers  with  disloyal 
impartiality  a  justice  and  a  defect  on  each  disputing 
side.  "  Good  honest  men,"  as  Dayton  calls  them,  rule 
the  world,  with  a  way  of  thinking  out  decisions  like 
shooting  cartloads  of  bricks,  and  with  a  steadfast  pleas- 
ure in  hostility.  Dayton  liked  to  call  his  antagonists 
"  blaggards  and  scoundrels  " — it  justified  his  opposi- 
tion— the  Lords  were  "  scoundrels,"  all  people  richer 
than  he  were  "  scoundrels,"  all  Socialists,  all  trouble- 
some poor  people;  he  liked  to  think  of  jails  and  justice 
being  done.  His  public  spirit  was  saturated  with  the 
sombre  joys  of  conflict  and  the  pleasant  thought  of 
condign  punishment  for  all  recalcitrant  souls.  That 
was  the  way  of  it,  I  perceived.  That  had  survival 
value,  as  the  biologists  say.  He  was  fool  enough  in 
politics  to  be  a  consistent  and  happy  politician.  .  .  . 

Hate  and  coarse  thinking;  how  the  infernal  truth 
of  the  phrase  beat  me  down  that  night!  I  couldn't 
remember  that  I  had  known  this  all  along,  and  that  it 
did  not  really  matter  in  the  slightest  degree.  I  had 
worked  it  all  out  long  ago  in  other  terms,  when  I  had 
seen  how  all  parties  stood  for  interests  inevitably,  and 


466      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

how  the  purpose  in  life  achieves  itself,  if  it  achieves 
itself  at  all,  as  a  bye  product  of  the  war  of  individuals 
and  classes.  Hadn't  I  always  known  that  science  and 
philosophy  elaborate  themselves  in  spite  of  all  the  pas- 
sion and  narrowness  of  men,  in  spite  of  the  vanities 
and  weakness  of  their  servants,  in  spite  of  all  the 
heated  disorder  of  contemporary  things?  Wasn't  it  my 
own  phrase  to  speak  of  "  that  greater  mind  in  men, 
in  which  we  are  but  moments  and  transitorily  lit  cells  ?  " 
Hadn't  I  known  that  the  spirit  of  man  still  speaks  like 
a  thing  that  struggles  out  of  mud  and  slime,  and  that 
the  mere  effort  to  speak  means  choking  and  disaster? 
Hadn't  I  known  that  we  who  think  without  fear  and 
speak  without  discretion  will  not  come  to  our  own  for 
the  next  two  thousand  years? 

It  was  the  last  was  most  forgotten  of  all  that  faith 
mislaid.  Before  mankind,  in  my  vision  that  night, 
stretched  new  centuries  of  confusion,  vast  stupid  wars, 
hastily  conceived  laws,  foolish  temporary  triumphs  of 
order,  lapses,  set-backs,  despairs,  catastrophes,  new 
beginnings,  a  multitudinous  wilderness  of  time,  a  nigh 
plotless  drama  of  wrong-headed  energies.  In  order  to 
assuage  my  parting  from  Isabel  we  had  set  ourselves  to 
imagine  great  rewards  for  our  separation,  great  personal 
rewards;  we  had  promised  ourselves  success  visible  and 
shining  in  our  lives.  To  console  ourselves  in  our  separa- 
tion we  had  made  out  of  the  Blue  Weekly  and  our 
young  Tory  movement  preposterously  enormous  things 
— as  though  those  poor  fertilising  touches  at  the  soil 
were  indeed  the  germinating  seeds  of  the  millennium, 
as  though  a  million  lives  such  as  ours  had  not  to  con- 
tribute before  the  beginning  of  the  beginning.  That 
poor  pretence  had  failed.  That  magnificent  proposi- 
tion shrivelled  to  nothing  in  the  black  loneliness  of  that 
night. 

I  saw  that  there  were  to  be  no  such  compensations. 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      467 

So  far  as  my  real  services  to  mankind  were  concerned  I 
had  to  live  an  unrecognised  and  unrewarded  life.  If  I 
made  successes  it  would  be  by  the  way.  Our  separa- 
tion would  alter  nothing  of  that.  My  scandal  would 
cling  to  me  now  for  all  my  life,  a  thing  affecting  rela- 
tionships, embarrassing  and  hampering  my  spirit.  I 
should  follow  the  common  lot  of  those  who  live  by  the 
imagination,  and  follow  it  now  in  infinite  loneliness  of 
soul;  the  one  good  comforter,  the  one  effectual  familiar, 
was  lost  to  me  for  ever;  I  should  do  good  and  evil 
together,  no  one  caring  to  understand;  I  should  pro- 
duce much  weary  work,  much  bad-spirited  work,  much 
absolute  evil;  the  good  in  me  would  be  too  often  ill- 
expressed  and  missed  or  misinterpreted.  In  the  end  I 
might  leave  one  gleaming  flake  or  so  amidst  the  slag 
heaps  for  a  moment  of  postmortem  sympathy.  I  was 
afraid  beyond  measure  of  my  derelict  self.  Because  I 
believed  with  all  my  soul  in  love  and  fine  thinking  that 
did  not  mean  that  I  should  necessarily  either  love 
steadfastly  or  think  finely.  I  remember  how  I  fell 
talking  to  God— I  think  I  talked  out  loud.  "  Why  do 
I  care  for  these  things  ?  "  I  cried,  "  when  I  can  do  so 
little!  Why  am  I  apart  from  the  jolly  thoughtless 
fighting  life  of  men?  These  dreams  fade  to  nothing- 
ness, and  leave  me  bare !  " 

I  scolded.  "  Why  don't  you  speak  to  a  man,  show 
yourself?  I  thought  I  had  a  gleam  of  you  in  Isabel, — 
and  then  you  take  her  away.  Do  you  really  think  I 
can  carry  on  this  game  alone,  doing  your  work  in  dark- 
ness and  silence,  living  in  muddled  conflict,  half  living, 
half  dying  ?  " 

Grotesque  analogies  arose  in  my  mind.  I  discovered 
a  strange  parallelism  between  my  now  tattered  phrase 
of  "  Love  and  fine  thinking "  and  the  "  Love  and  the 
Word"  of  Christian  thought.  Was  it  possible  the 
Christian  propaganda  had  at  the  outset  meant  just 


468      THE   NEW    MACHlAVELLl 

that  system  of  attitudes  I  had  been  feeling  my  way 
towards  from  the  very  beginning  of  my  life?  Had  I 
spent  a  lifetime  making  my  way  back  to  Christ?  It 
mocks  humanity  to  think  how  Christ  has  been  overlaid. 
I  went  along  now,  recalling  long-neglected  phrases  and 
sentences;  I  had  a  new  vision  of  that  great  central 
figure  preaching  love  with  hate  and  coarse  thinking 
even  in  the  disciples  about  Him,  rising  to  a  tidal  wave 
at  last  in  that  clamour  for  Barabbas,  and  the  public 
satisfaction  in  His  fate.  .  .  . 

It's  curious  to  think  that  hopeless  love  and  a  noisy 
disordered  dinner  should  lead  a  man  to  these  specula- 
tions, but  they  did.  "  He  did  mean  that !  "  I  said,  and 
suddenly  thought  of  what  a  bludgeon  they'd  made  of 
His  Christianity.  Athwart  that  perplexing,  patient 
enigma  sitting  inaudibly  among  publicans  and  sinners, 
danced  and  gibbered  a  long  procession  of  the  champions 
of  orthodoxy.  "  He  wasn't  human,"  I  said,  and  remem- 
bered that  last  despairing  cry,  "  My  God !  My  God ! 
why  hast  Thou  forsaken  Me?" 

"  Oh,  He  forsakes  every  one,"  I  said,  flying  out  as  a 
tired  mind  will,  with  an  obvious  repartee.  .  .  . 

I  passed  at  a  bound  from  such  monstrous  theology 
to  a  towering  rage  against  the  Baileys.  In  an  instant 
and  with  no  sense  of  absurdity  I  wanted — in  the 
intervals  of  love  and  fine  thinking — to  fling  about 
that  strenuously  virtuous  couple;  I  wanted  to  kick 
Keyhole  of  the  Peepshorv  into  the  gutter  and  make  a 
common  massacre  of  all  the  prosperous  rascaldom  that 
makes  a  trade  and  rule  of  virtue.  I  can  still  feel  that 
transition.  In  a  moment  I  had  reached  that  phase  of 
weakly  decisive  anger  which  is  for  people  of  my  tem- 
perament the  concomitant  of  exhaustion. 

"I  will  have  her,"  I  cried.  "By  Heaven!  I  mill 
have  her!  Life  mocks  me  and  cheats  me.  Nothing 
can  be  made  good  to  me  again.  .  .  .  Why  shouldn't 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      469 

I  save  what  I  can?  I  can't  save  myself  without 
her.  .  .  ." 

I  remember  myself — as  a  sort  of  anti-climax  to  thai 
— rather  tediously  asking  my  way  home.  I  was  some-i 
where  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Holland  Park.  .  .  . 

It  was  then  between  one  and  two.  I  felt  that  \ 
could  go  home  now  without  any  risk  of  meeting 
Margaret.  It  had  been  the  thought  of  returning  to 
Margaret  that  had  sent  me  wandering  that  night.  It 
is  one  of  the  ugliest  facts  I  recall  about  that  time  of 
crisis,  the  intense  aversion  I  felt  for  Margaret.  No 
sense  of  her  goodness,  her  injury  and  nobility,  and  the 
enormous  generosity  of  her  forgiveness,  sufficed  to  miti- 
gate that.  I  hope  now  that  in  this  book  I  am  able  to 
give  something  of  her  silvery  splendour,  but  all  through 
this  crisis  I  felt  nothing  of  that.  There  was  a  trium- 
phant kindliness  about  her  that  I  found  intolerable. 
She  meant  to  be  so  kind  to  me,  to  offer  unstinted 
consolation,  to  meet  my  needs,  to  supply  just  all  she 
imagined  Isabel  had  given  me. 

When  I  left  Tarvrille's,  I  felt  I  could  anticipate 
exactly  how  she  would  meet  my  homecoming.  She 
would  be  perplexed  by  my  crumpled  shirt  front,  on 
which  I  had  spilt  some  drops  of  wine;  she  would  over-! 
look  that  by  an  effort,  explain  it  sentimentally,  resolva 
it  should  make  no  difference  to  her.  She  would  want 
to  know  who  had  been  present,  what  we  had  talked 
about,  show  the  alertest  interest  in  whatever  it  was — • 
it  didn't  matter  what.  .  .  .  No,  I  couldn't  face  her. 

So  I  did  not  reach  my  study  until  two  o'clock. 

There,  I  remember,  stood  the  new  and  very  beautiful 
old  silver  candlesticks  that  she  had  set  there  two  days 
since  to  please  me — the  foolish  kindliness  of  it!  But 
in  her  search  for  expression,  Margaret  heaped  presents 
upon  me.  She  had  fitted  these  candlesticks  with  electric 
lights,  and  I  must,  I  suppose,  have  lit  them  to  write 


470      THE  NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

my  note  to  Isabel.  "  Give  me  a  word  —  the  world 
aches  without  you,"  was  all  I  scrawled,  though  I  fully 
meant  that  she  should  come  to  me.  I  knew,  though 
I  ought  not  to  have  known,  that  now  she  had  left  her 
flat,  she  was  with  the  Balfes  —  she  was  to  have  been 
married  from  the  Balfes  —  and  I  sent  my  letter  there. 
And  I  went  out  into  the  silent  square  and  posted  the 
note  forthwith,  because  I  knew  quite  clearly  that  if  I 
left  it  until  morning  I  should  never  post  it  at  all. 


I  had  a  curious  revulsion  of  feeling  that  morning  of 
our  meeting.  (Of  all  places  for  such  a  clandestine 
encounter  she  had  chosen  the  bridge  opposite  Bucking- 
ham Palace.)  Overnight  I  had  been  full  of  self  pity, 
and  eager  for  the  comfort  of  Isabel's  presence.  But 
the  ill-written  scrawl  in  which  she  had  replied  had 
been  full  of  the  suggestion  of  her  own  weakness  and 
misery.  And  when  I  saw  her,  my  own  selfish  sorrows 
were  altogether  swept  away  by  a  wave  of  pitiful 
tenderness.  Something  had  happened  to  her  that  I 
did  not  understand.  She  was  manifestly  ill.  She  came 
towards  me  wearily,  she  who  had  always  borne  herself  so 
bravely;  her  shoulders  seemed  bent,  and  her  eyes  were 
tired,  and  her  face  white  and  drawn.  All  my  life  has 
been  a  narrow  self-centred  life;  no  brothers,  no  sisters 
or  children  or  weak  things  had  ever  yet  made  any 
intimate  appeal  to  me,  and  suddenly  —  I  verily  believe 
for  the  first  time  in  my  life!  —  I  felt  a  great  passion  of 
protective  ownership;  I  felt  that  here  was  something 
that  I  could  die  to  shelter,  something  that  meant  more 
than  joy  or  pride  or  splendid  ambitions  or  splendid 
creation  to  me,  a  new  kind  of  hold  upon  me,  a  new 
power  in  the  world.  Some  sealed  fountain  was  opened 
in  my  breast.  I  knew  that  I  could  love  Isabel  broken, 
Isabel  beaten,  Isabel  ugly  and  in  pain,  more  than  I 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      471 

could  love  any  sweet  or  delightful  or  glorious  thing  in 
life.  I  didn't  care  any  more  for  anything  in  the  world 
but  Isabel,  and  that  I  should  protect  her.  I  trembled 
as  I  came  near  her,  and  could  scarcely  speak  to  her  for 
the  emotion  that  filled  me.  .  .  . 

"  I  had  your  letter,"  I  said. 

"  I  had  yours." 

"Where  can  we  talk?" 

I  remember  my  lame  sentences.  "  We'll  have  a  boat. 
That's  best  here." 

I  took  her  to  the  little  boat-house,  and  there  we 
hired  a  boat,  and  I  rowed  in  silence  under  the  bridge 
and  into  the  shade  of  a  tree.  The  square  grey  stone 
masses  of  the  Foreign  Office  loomed  through  the  twigs; 
I  remember,  and  a  little  space  of  grass  separated  us 
from  the  pathway  and  the  scrutiny  of  passers-by.  And 
there  we  talked. 

"  I  had  to  write  to  you,"  I  said. 

"  I  had  to  come." 

"  When  are  you  to  be  married  ?  " 

"  Thursday  week." 

"  Well  ?  "  I  said.     "  But— can  we  ?  " 

She  leant  forward  and  scrutinised  my  face  with  eyes 
•wide  open.  "  What  do  you  mean  ?  "  she  said  at  last 
in  a  whisper. 

"  Can  we  stand  it?    After  all?  " 

I  looked  at  her  white  face.     "  Can  you  ?  "  I  said. 

She  whispered.     "  Your  career  ?  " 

Then  suddenly  her  face  was  contorted, — she  wept 
silently,  exactly  as  a  child  tormented  beyond  endurance 
might  suddenly  weep.  .  .  . 

"Oh!  I  don't  care,"  I  cried,  "now.  I  don't  care. 
Damn  the  whole  system  of  things!  Damn  all  this 
patching  of  the  irrevocable!  I  want  to  take  care  of 
you,  Isabel!  and  have  you  with  me." 

"  I  can't  stand  it,"  she  blubbered. 


472      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

"  You  needn't  stand  it.  I  thought  it  was  best  foi 
you.  ...  I  thought  indeed  it  was  best  for  you.  I 
thought  even  you  wanted  it  like  that." 

"  Couldn't  I  live  alone — as  I  meant  to  do  ?  " 

"  No/'  I  said,  "  you  couldn't.  You're  not  strong 
enough.  I've  thought  of  that.  I've  got  to  shelter 
you." 

"  And  I  want  you/'  I  went  on.  "  I'm  not  strong 
enough — I  can't  stand  life  without  you." 

She  stopped  weeping,  she  made  a  great  effort  to 
control  herself,  and  looked  at  me  steadfastly  for  a 
moment.  "  I  was  going  to  kill  myself,"  she  whispered. 
"  I  was  going  to  kill  myself  quietly — somehow.  I 
meant  to  wait  a  bit  and  have  an  accident.  I  thought 
— you  didn't  understand.  You  were  a  man,  and 
couldn't  understand.  .  .  ." 

"  People  can't  do  as  we  thought  we  could  do/'  I 
said.  "We've  gone  too  far  together." 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  and  I  stared  into  her  eyes. 

"  The  horror  of  it,"  she  whispered.  "  The  horror 
of  being  handed  over.  It's  just  only  begun  to  dawn 
upon  me,  seeing  him  now  as  I  do.  He  tries  to  be  kind 
to  me.  ...  I  didn't  know.  I  felt  adventurous  before. 
...  It  makes  me  feel  like  all  the  women  in  the 
world  who  have  ever  been  owned  and  subdued.  .  .  . 
It's  not  that  he  isn't  the  best  of  men,  it's  because  I'm 
a  part  of  you.  ...  I  can't  go  through  with  it.  If  I 
go  through  with  it,  I  shall  be  left — robbed  of  pride — 
outraged — a  woman  beaten.  .  .  ." 

"  I  know,"  I  said,  "  I  know." 

"  I  want  to  live  alone.  ...  I  don't  care  for  any- 
thing now  but  just  escape.  If  you  can  help  me.  .  .  ." 

"I  must  take  you  away.  There's  nothing  for  us  but 
to  go  away  together." 

"But  your  work,"  she  said;  "your  career!  Mar- 
garet !  Our  promises !  " 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      473 

"We've  made  a  mess  of  things,  Isabel — or  things 
have  made  a  mess  of  us.  I  don't  know  which.  Our 
flags  are  in  the  mud,  anyhow.  It's  too  late  to  save 
those  other  things!  They  have  to  go.  You  can't 
make  terms  with  defeat.  I  thought  it  was  Margaret 
needed  me  most.  But  it's  you.  And  I  need  you.  I 
didn't  think  of  that  either.  I  haven't  a  doubt  left 
in  the  world  now.  We've  got  to  leave  everything 
rather  than  leave  each  other.  I'm  sure  of  it.  Now 
we  have  gone  so  far.  We've  got  to  go  right  down  to 
earth  and  begin  again.  .  .  .  Dear,  I  want  disgrace 
with  you.  .  .  ." 

So  I  whispered  to  her  as  she  sat  crumpled  together 
on  the  faded  cushions  of  the  boat,  this  white  and  weary 
young  woman  who  had  been  so  valiant  and  careless  a 
girl.  "  I  don't  care,"  I  said.  "  I  don't  care  for  any- 
thing, if  I  can  save  you  out  of  the  wreckage  we  have 
made  together." 


The  next  day  I  went  to  the  office  of  the  Blue 
Weekly  in  order  to  get  as  much  as  possible  of  its  affairs 
in  working  order  before  I  left  London  with  Isabel.  I 
just  missed  Shoesmith  in  the  lower  office.  Upstairs 
I  found  Britten  amidst  a  pile  of  outside  articles, 
methodically  reading  the  title  of  each  and  sometimes 
the  first  half-dozen  lines,  and  either  dropping  them  in 
a  growing  heap  on  the  floor  for  a  clerk  to  return,  or 
putting  them  aside  for  consideration.  I  interrupted 
him,  squatted  on  the  window-sill  of  the  open  window, 
and  sketched  out  my  ideas  for  the  session. 

"  You're  far-sighted,"  he  remarked  at  something  of 
mine  which  reached  out  ahead. 

"  I  like  to  see  things  prepared,"  I  answered. 

"  Yes/'  he  said,  and  ripped  open  the  envelope  of  a 
fresh  aspirant. 


474      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

I  was  silent  while  he  read. 

"  You're  going  away  with  Isabel  Rivers,"  he  said 
abruptly. 

"Well!"  I  said,  amazed. 

"  I  know/'  he  said,  and  lost  his  breath.  "  Not  my 
business.  Only " 

It  was  queer  to  find  Britten  afraid  to  say  a  thing. 

"  It's  not  playing  the  game,"  he  said. 

"  What  do  you  know  ?  " 

"  Everything  that  matters." 

"  Some  games,"  I  said,  "  are  too  hard  to  play." 

There  came  a  pause  between  us. 

"  I  didn't  know  you  were  watching  all  this,"  I  said. 

"  Yes,"  he  answered,  after  a  pause,  "  I've  watched." 

"  Sorry — sorry  you  don't  approve." 

"  It  means  smashing  such  an  infernal  lot  of  things. 
Remington." 

I  did  not  answer. 

"You're  going  away  then?" 

"Yes." 

"Soon?" 

"  Right  away." 

"  There's  your  wife." 

"  I  know." 

"  Shoesmith — whom  you're  pledged  to  in  a  manner. 
You've  just  picked  him  out  and  made  him  conspicuous. 
Every  one  will  know.  Oh!  of  course — it's  nothing  to 
you.  Honour " 

"I  know." 

"  Common  decency." 

I  nodded. 

"All  this  movement  of  ours  That's  what  7  care  for 
most.  .  .  .  It's  come  to  be  a  big  thing,  Remington." 

"  That  will  go  on." 

"  We  have  a  use  for  you — no  one  else  quite  fills  it. 
No  one.  ...  I'm  not  sure  it  will  go  on." 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      475 

"Do  you  think  I  haven't  thought  of  all  these 
things?" 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders,  and  rejected  two  papers 
unread. 

"  I  knew,"  he  remarked,  "  when  you  came  back  from 
America.  You  were  alight  with  it."  Then  he  let  his 
bitterness  gleam  for  a  moment.  "  But  I  thought  you 
would  stick  to  your  bargain." 

"  It's  not  so  much  choice  as  you  think/'  I  said. 

"There's  always  a  choice." 

"  No,"  I  said. 

He  scrutinised  my  face. 

"  I  can't  live  without  her — I  can't  work.  She's  all 
mixed  up  with  this — and  everything.  And  besides, 
there's  things  you  can't  understand.  There's  feelings 
you've  never  felt.  .  .  .  You  don't  understand  how 
much  we've  been  to  one  another." 

Britten  frowned  and  thought. 

"  Some  things  one's  got  to  do,"  he  threw  out. 

"  Some  things  one  can't  do." 

"  These  infernal  institutions " 

"  Some  one  must  begin,"  I  said. 

He  shook  his  head.     "  Not  you/'  he  said.     "  No!  " 

He  stretched  out  his  hands  on  the  desk  before  him, 
and  spoke  again. 

"  Remington,"  he  said,  "  I've  thought  of  this  busi- 
ness day  and  night  too.  It  matters  to  me.  It  matters 
immensely  to  me.  In  a  way — it's  a  thing  one  doesn't 
often  say  to  a  man — I've  loved  you.  I'm  the  sort  of 
man  who  leads  a  narrow  life.  .  .  .  But  you've  been 
something  fine  and  good  for  me,  since  that  time,  do 
you  remember?  when  we  talked  about  Mecca  together." 

I  nodded. 

"  Yes.  And  you'll  always  be  something  fine  and 
good  for  me  anyhow.  I  know  things  about  you, — 
qualities — no  mere  act  can  destroy  them.  .  .  .  Well,  I 


476      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

can  tell  you,  you're  doing  wrong.  You're  going  on 
now  like  a  man  who  is  hypnotised  and  can't  turn  round. 
You're  piling  wrong  on  wrong.  It  was  wrong  for  you 
two  people  ever  to  be  lovers." 

He  paused. 

"  It  gripped  us  hard,"  I  said. 

"  Yes ! — but  in  your  position !  And  hers !  It  was 
vile!" 

"  You've  not  been  tempted." 

"  How  do  you  know?  Anyhow — having  done  that, 
you  ought  to  have  stood  the  consequences  and  thought 
of  other  people.  You  could  have  ended  it  at  the  first 
pause  for  reflection.  You  didn't.  You  blundered 
again.  You  kept  on.  You  owed  a  certain  secrecy  to 
all  of  us !  You  didn't  keep  it.  You  were  careless. 
You  made  things  worse.  This  engagement  and  this 
publicity ! — - —  Damn  it,  Remington !  " 

"  I  know,"  I  said,  with  smarting  eyes.  "  Damn  it ! — - 
with  all  my  heart!  It  came  of  trying  to  patch.  .  .  . 
You  can't  patch." 

"  And  now,  as  I  care  for  anything  under  heaven,, 
Remington,  you  two  ought  to  stand  these  last  conse- 
quences—and part.  You  ought  to  part.  Other  people 
have  to  stand  things!  Other  people  have  to  part. 
You  ought  to.  You  say^-what  do  you  say?  It's  loss 
of  so  much  life  to  lose  each  other.  So  is  losing  a  hand 
or  a  leg.  But  it's  what  you've  incurred.  Ampu- 
tate. Take  your  punishment .  After  all,  you  chose 

it." 

"  Oh,  damn !  "  I  said,  standing  up  and  going  to  the 
window. 

"  Damn  by  all  means.  I  never  knew  a  topic  so  full 
of  justifiable  damns.  But  you  two  did  choose  it.  You 
ought  to  stick  to  your  undertaking." 

I  turned  upon  him  with  a  snarl  in  my  voice.  "  My 
dear  Britten!"  I  cried.  "Don't  I  know  I'm  doing 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      477 

wrong?  Aren't  I  in  a  net?  Suppose  I  don't  go!  Is 
there  any  right  in  that?  Do  you  think  we're  going  to 
be  much  to  ourselves  or  any  one  after  this  parting? 
I've  been  thinking  all  last  night  of  this  business,  trying" 
it  over  and  over  again  from  the  beginning.  How  was 
it  we  went  wrong?  Since  I  came  back  from  America 
— I  grant  you  that — but  since,  there's  never  been  a  step 
that  wasn't  forced,  that  hadn't  as  much  right  in  it  or 
more,  as  wrong.  You  talk  as  though  I  was  a  thing  of 
steel  that  could  bend  this  way  or  that  and  never  change. 
You  talk  as  though  Isabel  was  a  cat  one  could  give  to 
any  kind  of  owner.  .  .  .  We  two  are  things  that  change 
and  grow  and  alter  all  the  time.  We're — so  inter- 
woven that  being  parted  now  will  leave  us  just  mis- 
shapen cripples.  .  .  .  You  don't  know  the  motives,  you 
don't  know  the  rush  and  feel  of  things,  you  don't  know 
how  it  was  with  us,  and  how  it  is  with  us.  You  don't 
know  the  hunger  for  the  mere  sight  of  one  another; 
you  don't  know  anything." 

Britten  looked  at  his  finger-nails  closely.  His  red 
face  puckered  to  a  wry  frown.  "  Haven't  we  all  at 
times  wanted  the  world  put  back  ?  "  he  grunted,  and 
looked  hard  and  close  at  one  particular  nail. 

There  was  a  long  pause. 

"  I  want  her,"  I  said,  "  and  I'm  going  to  have  her. 
I'm  too  tired  for  balancing  the  right  or  wrong  of  it 
any  more.  You  can't  separate  them.  I  saw  her 
yesterday.  .  .  .  She's — ill.  .  .  .  I'd  take  her  now,  if 
death  were  just  outside  the  door  waiting  for  us." 

"Torture?" 

I  thought.    "  Yes." 

"For  her?" 

"  There  isn't,"  I  said. 

"If  there  was?" 

I  made  no  answer. 

"  It's  blind   Want.     And  there's  nothing  ever  been 


478      THE  NEW   MACHIAVELLI 


put  into  you  to  stand  against  it.     What  are  you 
to  do  with  the  rest  of  your  lives?  " 

"  No  end  of  things/' 

"  Nothing." 

"  I  don't  believe  you  are  right/'  I  said.  "  I  believe 
we  can  save  something  -  " 

Britten  shook  his  head.  "  Some  scraps  of  salvage 
won't  excuse  you/'  he  said. 

His  indignation  rose.  "  In  the  middle  of  life  !  "  he 
said.  "  No  man  has  a  right  to  take  his  hand  from  the 
plough  !  " 

He  leant  forward  on  his  desk  and  opened  an  argu- 
mentative palm.  "  You  know,  Remington,"  he  said, 
"  and  I  know,  that  if  this  could  be  fended  off  for  six 
months  —  if  you  could  be  clapped  in  prison,  or  got  out 
of  the  way  somehow,  —  until  this  marriage  was  all  over 
and  settled  down  for  a  year,  say  —  you  know  then  you 
two  could  meet,  curious,  happy,  as  friends.  Saved  i 
You  know  it." 

I  turned  and  stared  at  him.  "  You're  wrong,  Brit- 
ten," I  said.  "  And  does  it  matter  if  we  could  ?  " 

I  found  that  in  talking  to  him  I  could  frame  the 
apologetics  I  had  not  been  able  to  find  for  myself 
alone. 

"  I  ain  certain  of  one  thing,  Britten.  It  is  our  duty 
not  to  hush  up  this  scandal." 

He  raised  his  eyebrows.  I  perceived  now  the  ele- 
ment of  absurdity  in  me,  but  at  the  time  I  was  as  seri- 
ous as  a  man  who  is  burning. 

"  It's  our  duty,"  I  went  on,  "  to  smash  now  openly 
in  the  sight  of  every  one.  Yes  !  I've  got  that  as 
clean  and  plain  —  as  prison  whitewash.  I  am  con- 
vinced that  we  have  got  to  be  public  to  the  uttermost 
now  —  I  mean  it  —  until  every  corner  of  our  world 
knows  this  story,  knows  it  fully,  adds  it  to  the  Parncft 
story  and  the  Ashton  Dean  story  and  the  Carmel  story 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      479 

and  the  Witterslea  story,  and  all  the  other  stories  that 
have  picked  man  after  man  out  of  English  public  1'fe. 
the  men  with  active  imaginations,  the  men  of  strdng 
initiative.  To  think  this  tottering  old-woman  ridden 
Empire  should  dare  to  waste  a  man  on  such  a  score! 
You  say  I  ought  to  be  penitent •" 

Britten  shook  his  head  and  smiled  very  faintly. 

"  I'm  boiling  with  indignation/'  I  said.  "  I  lay  in 
bed  last  night  and  went  through  it  all.  What  in  God's 
name  was  to  be  expected  of  us  but  what  has  happened? 
I  went  through  my  life  bit  by  bit  last  night,  I  recalled 
all  I've  had  to  do  with  virtue  and  women,  and  all  I 
was  told  and  how  I  was  prepared.  I  was  born  into 
cowardice  and  debasement.  We  all  are.  Our  genera- 
tion's grimy  with  hypocrisy.  I  came  to  the  most 
beautiful  things  in  life — like  peeping  Tom  of  Cov- 
entry. I  was  never  given  a  light,  never  given  a  touch 
of  natural  manhood  by  all  this  dingy,  furtive,  canting, 
humbugging  English  world.  Thank  God!  I'll  soon 
be  out  of  it!  The  shame  of  it!  The  very  savages  in 
Australia  initiate  their  children  better  than  the  English 
do  to-day.  Neither  of  us  was  ever  given  a  view  of 
what  they  call  morality  that  didn't  make  it  show  as 
shabby  subservience,  as  the  meanest  discretion,  an  ab- 
ject submission  to  unreasonable  prohibitions!  meek 
surrender  of  mind  and  body  to  the  dictation  of  pedants 
and  old  women  and  fools.  We  weren't  taught — we 
were  mumbled  at!  And  when  we  found  that  the  thing 
they  called  unclean,  unclean,  was  Pagan  beauty — God! 
it  was  a  glory  to  sin,  Britten,  it  was  a  pride  and 
splendour  b'ke  bathing  in  the  sunlight  after  dust  and 
grime !  " 

"Yes,"   said   Britten.     "That's   all  very  well -" 

I  interrupted  him.  "  I  know  there's  a  case — I'm 
beginning  to  think  it  a  vab'd  case  against  us;  but  we 
never  met  it!  There's  a  steely  pride  in  self  restraint, 


480      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

a  nobility  of  chastity,  but  only  for  those  who  see  and 
think  and  act — untrammeled  and  unafraid.  The  other 
thing,  the  current  thing,  why!  it's  worth  as  much  as 
the  chastity  of  a  monkey  kept  in  a  cage  by  itself !  "  I 
put  my  foot  in  a  chair,  and  urged  my  case  upon  him. 
"  This  is  a  dirty  world,  Britten,  simply  because  it  is  a 
muddled  world,  and  the  thing  you  call  morality  is 
dirtier  now  than  the  thing  you  call  immorality.  Why 
don't  the  moralists  pick  their  stuff  out  of  the  slime  if 
they  care  for  it,  and  wipe  it? — damn  them!  I  am 
burning  now  to  say:  '  Yes,  we  did  this  and  this/  to  all 
the  world.  All  the  world!  ...  I  will!" 

Britten  rubbed  the  palm  of  his  hand  on  the  corner 
of  his  desk.  "  That's  all  very  well,  Remington,"  he 
said  "  You  mean  to  go." 

He  stopped  and  began  again.  "If  you  didn't 
know  you  were  in  the  wrong  you  wouldn't  be  so 
damned  rhetorical.  You're  in  the  wrong.  It's  as  plain 
to  you  as  it  is  to  me.  You're  leaving  a  big  work, 
you're  leaving  a  wife  who  trusted  you,  to  go  and  live 
with  your  jolly  mistress.  .  .  .  You  won't  see  you're 
a  statesman  that  matters,  that  no  single  man,  maybe, 
might  come  to  such  influence  as  you  in  the  next  ten 
years.  You're  throwing  yourself  away  and  accusing 
your  country  of  rejecting  you." 

He  swung  round  upon  his  swivel  at  me.  "  Reming- 
ton," he  said,  "  have  you  forgotten  the  immense  things 
our  movement  means?  " 

I  thought.     "Perhaps  I  am  rhetorical,"  I  said. 

"But  the  things  we  might  achieve!  If  you'd  only 
stay  now — even  now!  Oh!  you'd  suffer  a  little  soci- 
ally, but  what  of  that?  You'd  be  able  to  go  on — per- 
haps all  the  better  for  hostility  of  the  kind  you'd  get. 
You  know,  Remington — you  know." 

I  thought  and  went  back  to  his  earlier  point.  "  If 
I  am  rhetorical,  at  any  rate  it's  a  living  feeling  behind 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      481 

it.  Yes,  I  remember  all  the  implications  of  our  aims — 
very  splendid,  very  remote.  But  just  now  it's  rather 
like  offering  to  give  a  freezing  man  the  sunlit  Hima- 
layas from  end  to  end  in  return  for  his  camp-fire. 
When  you  talk  of  me  and  my  jolly  mistress,  it  isn't 
fair.  That  misrepresents  everything.  I'm  not  going 
out  of  this — for  delights.  That's  the  sort  of  thing 
men  like  Snuffles  and  Keyhole  imagine — that  excites 
them!  When  I  think  of  the  things  these  creatures 
think!  Ugh!  But  you  know  better?  You  know  that 
physical  passion  that  burns  like  a  fire — ends  clean. 
I'm  going  for  love,  Britten — if  I  sinned  for  passion. 
I'm  going,  Britten,  because  when  I  saw  her  the  other 
day  she  hurt  me.  She  hurt  me  damnably,  Britten.  .  .  . 
I've  been  a  cold  man — I've  led  a  rhetorical  life — you 
hit  me  with  that  word! — I  put  things  in  a  windy  way, 
I  know,  but  what  has  got  hold  of  me  at  last  is  her  pain. 
She's  ill.  Don't  you  understand?  She's  a  sick  thing 
— a  weak  thing.  She's  no  more  a  goddess  than  I'm  a 
god.  .  .  .  I'm  not  in  love  with  her  now;  I'm  raw  with 
love  for  her.  I  feel  like  a  man  that's  been  flayed.  I 
have  been  flayed.  .  .  .  You  don't  begin  to  imagine  the 
sort  of  helpless  solicitude.  .  .  .  She's  not  going  to  do 
things  easily;  she's  ill.  Her  courage  fails.  .  .  .  It's 
hard  to  put  things  when  one  isn't  rhetorical,  but  it's 
this,  Britten — there  are  distresses  that  matter  more 
than  all  the  delights  or  achievements  in  the  world.  .  .  . 
I  made  her  what  she  is — as  I  never  made  Margaret. 
I've  made  her — I've  broken  her.  .  .  .  I'm  going  with 
my  own  woman.  The  rest  of  my  life  and  England, 
and  so  forth,  must  square  itself  to  that.  .  .  ." 

For  a  long  time,  as  it  seemed,  we  remained  silent 
and  motionless.  We'd  said  all  we  had  to  say.  My 
eyes  caught  a  printed  slip  upon  the  desk  before  him, 
and  I  came  back  abruptly  to  the  paper. 

I  picked  up  this  galley  proof.     It  was  one  of  Win- 


482      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

ter's    essays.       "  This    man    goes    on    doing    first-rate 
stuff/'  I  said.     "  I  hope  you  will  keep  him  going." 

He  did  not  answer  for  a  moment  or  so.  "  I'll  keep 
him  going,"  he  said  at  last  with  a  sigh. 

§   5 

I  have  a  letter  Margaret  wrote  me  within  a  week  of 
our  flight.  I  cannot  resist  transcribing  some  of  it  here, 
because  it  lights  things  as  no  word  of  mine  can  do.  It 
is  a  string  of  nearly  inconsecutive  thoughts  written  in 
pencil  in  a  fine,  tall,  sprawling  hand.  Its  very  incon- 
secutiveness  is  essential.  Many  words  are  underlined. 
It  was  in  answer  to  one  from  me;  but  what  I  wrote  has 
passed  utterly  from  my  mind.  .  .  . 

"  Certainly,"  she  says,  "  I  want  to  hear  from  you, 
but  I  do  not  want  to  see  you.  There's  a  sort  of  ab- 
stract you  that  I  want  to  go  on  with.  Something  I've 
made  out  of  you.  ...  I  want  to  know  things  about 
you — but  I  don't  want  to  see  or  feel  or  imagine.  When 
some  day  I  have  got  rid  of  my  intolerable  sense  of 
proprietorship,  it  may  be  different.  Then  perhaps  wd 
may  meet  again.  I  think  it  is  even  more  the  loss  of. 
our  political  work  and  dreams  that  I  am  feeling  than 
the  loss  of  your  presence.  Aching  loss.  I  thought 
so  much  of  the  things  we  were  doing  for  the  world—- 
had  given  myself  so  unreservedly.  You've  left  me 
with  nothing  to  do.  I  am  suddenly  at  loose  ends.  .  .  . 

"  We  women  are  trained  to  be  so  dependent  on  a 
man.  I've  got  no  life  of  my  own  at  all.  It  seems* 
now  to  me  that  I  wore  my  clothes  even  for  you  and 
your  schemes.  .  .  . 

"  After  I  have  told  myself  a  hundred  times  why  this 
has  happened,  I  ask  again,  '  Why  did  he  give  things 
up?  Why  did  he  give  things  up?  '  .  .  . 

"  It  is  just  as  though  you  were  wilfully  dead.  .  .  . 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      483 

"Then  I  ask  again  and  again  whether  this  thing 
need  have  happened  at  all,  whether  if  I  had  had  a 
warning,  if  I  had  understood  better,  I  might  not  have 
adapted  myself  to  your  restless  mind  and  made  this 
catastrophe  impossible.  .  .  . 

"  Oh,  my  dear !  why  hadn't  you  the  pluck  to  hurt  me 
at  the  beginning,  and  tell  me  what  you  thought  of  me 
and  life?  You  didn't  give  me  a  chance;  not  a  chance. 
I  suppose  you  couldn't.  All  these  things  you  and  I 
stood  away  from.  You  let  my  first  repugnances  repel 
you.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  strange  to  think  after  all  these  years  that  I 
should  be  asking  myself,  do  I  love  you?  have  I  loved 
you?  In  a  sense  I  think  I  hate  you.  I  feel  you  have 
taken  my  life,  dragged  it  in  your  wake  for  a  time, 
thrown  it  aside.  I  am  resentful.  Unfairly  resentful, 
for  why  should  I  exact  that  you  should  watch  and  un- 
derstand my  life,  when  clearly  I  have  understood  so 
little  of  yours.  But  I  am  savage — savage  at  the 
wrecking  of  all  you  were  to  do. 

"  Oh,  why — why  did  you  give  things  up  ? 

"  No  human  being  is  his  own  to  do  what  he  likes 
with.  You  were  not  only  pledged  to  my  tiresome,  in- 
effectual companionship,  but  to  great  purposes.  They 
are  great  purposes.  .  .  . 

"If  only  I  could  take  up  your  work  as  you  leave 
it,  with  the  strength  you  had — then  indeed  I  feel  I 
could  let  you  go — you  and  your  young  mistress.  .  .  . 
All  that  matters  so  little  to  me.  .  .  . 

"  Yet  I  think  I  must  indeed  love  you  yourself  in  my 
slower  way.  At  times  I  am  mad  with  jealousy  at  the 
thought  of  all  I  hadn't  the  wit  to  give  you.  .  .  .  I've 
always  hidden  my  tears  from  you — and  what  was  in 
iriy  heart.  It's  my  nature  to  hide — and  you,  you  want 
things  brought  to  you  to  see.  You  are  so  curious  as 
to  be  almost  cruel.  You  don't  understand  reserves. 


484      THE   NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

You  have  no  mercy  with  restraints  and  reservations. 
You  are  not  really  a  civilised  man  at  all.  You  hate 
pretences — and  not  only  pretences  but  decent  cover- 
ings. .  .  . 

"  It's  only  after  one  has  lost  love  and  the  chance  of 
loving  that  slow  people  like  myself  find  what  they 
might  have  done.  Why  wasn't  I  bold  and  reckless  and 
abandoned?  It's  as  reasonable  to  ask  that,  I  suppose, 
as  to  ask  why  my  hair  is  fair.  .  .  . 

"  I  go  on  with  these  perhapses  over  and  over  again 
here  when  I  find  myself  alone.  .  .  . 

"  My  dear,  my  dear,  you  can't  think  of  the  desola- 
tion of  things—- —  I  shall  never  go  back  to  that  house 
we  furnished  together,  that  was  to  have  been  the  labor- 
atory (do  you  remember  calling  it  a  laboratory?)  in 
which  you  were  to  forge  so  much  of  the  new  order.  .  .  . 

"  But,  dear,  if  I  can  help  you — even  now — in  any 
way — help  both  of  you,  I  mean.  ...  It  tears  me  when 
I  think  of  you  poor  and  discredited.  You  will  let  me 
help  you  if  I  can — it  will  be  the  last  wrong  not  to  let 
me  do  that.  .  .  . 

"  You  had  better  not  get  ill.  If  you  do,  and  I  hear 
of  it — I  shall  come  after  you  with  a  troupe  of  doctors 
and  nurses.  If  I  am  a  failure  as  a  wife,  no  one  has 
ever  said  I  was  anything  but  a  success  as  a  district  vis- 
itor. .  .  ." 

There  are  other  sheets,  but  I  cannot  tell  whether 
they  were  written  before  or  after  the  ones  from  which 
I  have  quoted.  And  most  of  them  have  little  things 
too  intimate  to  set  down.  But  this  oddly  penetrating 
analysis  of  our  differences  must,  I  think,  be  given. 

"  There  are  all  sorts  of  things  I  can't  express  about 
this  and  want  to.  There's  this  difference  that  has 
always  been  between  us,  that  you  like  nakedness  and 
wildness,  and  I,  clothing  and  restraint.  It  goes  through 
everything.  You  are  always  talking  of  order  and  sys- 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      485 

tern,  and  the  splendid  dream  of  the  order  that  might 
replace  the  muddled  system  you  hate,  but  by  a  sort 
of  instinct  you  seem  to  want  to  break  the  law.  I've 
watched  you  so  closely.  Now  /  want  to  obey  laws, 
to  make  sacrifices,  to  follow  rules.  I  don't  want  to 
make,  but  I  do  want  to  keep.  You  are  at  once  makers 
and  rebels,  you  and  Isabel  too.  You're  bad  people — 
criminal  people,  I  feel,  and  yet  full  of  something  the 
world  must  have.  You're  so  much  better  than  me,  and 
so  much  viler.  It  may  be  there  is  no  making  without 
destruction,  but  it  seems  to  me  sometimes  that  it  is  noth- 
ing but  an  instinct  for  lawlessness  that  drives  you. 
You  remind  me — do  you  remember? — of  that  time  we 
went  from  Naples  to  Vesuvius,  and  walked  over  the  hot 
new  lava  there.  Do  you  remember  how  tired  I  was? 
I  know  it  disappointed  you  that  I  was  tired.  One 
walked  there  in  spite  of  the  heat  because  there  was  a 
crust;  like  custom,  like  law.  But  directly  a  crust 
forms  on  things,  you  are  restless  to  break  down  to  the 
fire  again.  You  talk  of  beauty,  both  of  you,  as  some- 
thing terrible,  mysterious,  imperative.  Your  beauty  is 
something  altogether  different  from  anything  I  know 
or  feel.  It  has  pain  in  it.  Yet  you  always  speak  as 
though  it  was  something  I  ought  to  feel  and  am  dis- 
honest not  to  feel.  My  beauty  is  a  quiet  thing.  You 
have  always  laughed  at  my  feeling  for  old-fashioned 
chintz  and  blue  china  and  Sheraton.  But  I  like  all 
these  familiar  used  things.  My  beauty  is  still  beauty, 
and  yours,  is  excitement.  I  know  nothing  of  the  fas- 
cination of  the  fire,  or  why  one  should  go  deliberately 
out  of  all  the  decent  fine  things  of  life  to  run  dangers 
and  be  singed  and  tormented  and  destroyed.  I  don't 
understand.  .  .  ." 

§  6 
I  remember  very  freshly  the  mood  of  our  departure 


486      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

from  London,  the  platform  of  Charing  Cross  with  the 
big  illuminated  clock  overhead,  the  bustle  of  porters 
and  passengers  with  luggage,  the  shouting  of  newsboys 
and  boys  with  flowers  and  sweets,  and  the  groups  of 
friends  seeing  travellers  off  by  the  boat  train.  Isabel 
sat  very  quiet  and  still  in  the  compartment,  and  I  stood 
upon  the  platform  with  the  door  open,  with  a  curious 
reluctance  to  take  the  last  step  that  should  sever  me 
from  London's  ground.  I  showed  our  tickets,  and 
bought  a  handful  of  red  roses  for  her.  At  last  came 
the  guards  crying:  "Take  your  seats,"  and  I  got  in 
and  closed  the  door  on  me.  We  had,  thank  Heaven! 
a  compartment  to  ourselves.  I  let  down  the  window 
and  stared  out. 

There  was  a  bustle  of  final  adieux  on  the  platform, 
a  cry  of  "  Stand  away,  please,  stand  away !  "  and  the 
train  was  gliding  slowly  and  smoothly  out  of  the  sta- 
tion. 

I  looked  out  upon  the  river  as  the  train  rumbled  with 
slowly  gathering  pace  across  the  bridge,  and  the  bob- 
bing black  heads  of  the  pedestrians  in  the  footway,  and 
the  curve  of  the  river  and  the  glowing  great  hotels, 
and  the  lights  and  reflections  and  blacknesses  of  that 
old,  familiar  spectacle.  Then  with  a  common  thought, 
we  turned  our  eyes  westward  to  where  the  pinnacles  of 
Westminster  and  the  shining  clock  tower  rose  hard  and 
clear  against  the  still,  luminous  sky. 

"  They'll  be  in  Committee  on  the  Reformatory  Bill 
to-night,"  I  said,  a  little  stupidly. 

"  And  so,"  I  added,  "  good-bye  to  London !  " 

We  said  no  more,  but  watched  the  south-side  streets 
below — bright  gleams  of  lights  and  movement,  and  the 
dark,  dim,  monstrous  shapes  of  houses  and  factories. 
We  ran  through  Waterloo  Station,  London  Bridge, 
New  Cross,  St.  John's.  We  said  never  a  word.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  for  a  time  we  had  exhausted  our 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      487 

emotions.  We  had  escaped,  we  had  cut  our  knot,  we 
had  accepted  the  last  penalty  of  that  headlong  return 
of  mine  from  Chicago  a  year  and  a  half  ago.  That 
was  all  settled.  That  harvest  of  feelings  we  had 
reaped.  I  thought  now  only  of  London,  of  London  as 
the  symbol  of  all  we  were  leaving  and  all  we  had  lost 
in  the  world.  I  felt  nothing  now  but  an  enormous  and 
overwhelming  regret.  .  .  . 

The  train  swayed  and  rattled  on  its  way.  We  ran 
through  old  Bromstead,  where  once  I  had  played  with 
cities  and  armies  on  the  nursery  floor.  The  sprawling 
suburbs  with  their  scattered  lights  gave  way  to  dim 
tree-set  country  under  a  cloud-veiled,  intermittently 
shining  moon.  We  passed  Cardcaster  Place.  Perhaps 
old  Wardingham,  that  pillar  of  the  old  Conservatives, 
was  there,  fretting  over  his  unsuccessful  struggle  with 
our  young  Toryism.  Little  he  recked  of  this  new  turn 
of  the  wheel  and  how  it  would  confirm  his  contempt  of 
all  our  novelties.  Perhaps  some  faint  intimation  drew 
him  to  the  window  to  see  behind  the  stems  of  the  young 
fir  trees  that  bordered  his  domain,  the  little  string  of 
lighted  carriage  windows  gliding  southward.  .  .  . 

Suddenly  I  began  to  realise  just  what  it  was  we 
were  doing. 

And  now,  indeed,  I  knew  what  London  ha$  been  to 
me,  London  where  I  had  been  born  and  educated,  the 
slovenly  mother  of  my  mind  and  all  my  ambitions, 
London  and  the  empire!  It  seemed  to  me  we  must 
be  going  out  to  a  world  that  was  utterly  empty.  All 
our  significance  fell  from  us — and  before  us  was  no 
meaning  any  more.  We  were  leaving  London;  my 
hand,  which  had  gripped  so  hungrily  upon  its  complex 
life,  had  been  forced  from  it,  my  fingers  left  their  hold. 
That  was  over.  I  should  never  have  a  voice  in  public 
affairs  again.  The  inexorable  unwritten  law  which 
forbids  overt  scandal  sentenced  me.  We  were  going 


488      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

out  to  a  new  life,  a  life  that  appeared  in  that  moment 
to  be  a  mere  shrivelled  remnant  of  me,  a  mere  resid- 
uum of  sheltering  and  feeding  and  seeing  amidst  alien 
scenery  and  the  sound  of  unfamiliar  tongues.  We 
were  going  to  live  cheaply  in  a  foreign  place,  so  cut 
off  that  I  meet  now  the  merest  stray  tourist,  the  com- 
monest tweed-clad  stranger  with  a  mixture  of  shyness 
and  hunger.  .  .  .  And  suddenly  all  the  schemes  I  was 
leaving  appeared  fine  and  adventurous  and  hopeful  as 
they  had  never  done  before.  How  great  was  this  pur- 
pose I  had  relinquished,  this  bold  and  subtle  remaking 
of  the  English  will!  I  had  doubted  so  many  things, 
and  now  suddenly  I  doubted  my  unimportance,  doubted 
my  right  to  this  suicidal  abandonment.  Was  I  not  a 
trusted  messenger,  greatly  trusted  and  favoured,  who 
had  turned  aside  by  the  way?  Had  I  not,  after  all, 
stood  for  far  more  than  I  had  thought;  was  I  not  filch- 
ing from  that  dear  great  city  of  my  birth  and  life, 
some  vitally  necessary  thing,  a  key,  a  link,  a  reconcil- 
ing clue  in  her  political  development,  that  now  she 
might  seek  vaguely  for  in  vain?  What  is  one  life 
against  the  State?  Ought  I  not  to  have  sacrificed 
Isabel  and  all  my  passion  and  sorrow  for  Isabel,  and 
held  to  my  thing — stuck  to  my  thing? 

I  heard  as  though  he  had  spoken  it  in  the  carriage 
Britten's  "  It  was  a  good  game.  No  end  of  a  game." 
And  for  the  first  time  I  imagined  the  faces  and  voices 
of  Crupp  and  Esmeer  and  Gane  when  they  learnt  of 
this  secret  flight,  this  flight  of  which  they  were  quite 
unwarned.  And  Shoesmith  might  be  there  in  the 
house, — Shoesmith  who  was  to  have  been  married  in 
four  days — the  thing  might  hit  him  full  in  front  of  any 
kind  of  people.  Cruel  eyes  might  watch  him.  Why 
the  devil  hadn't  I  written  letters  to  warn  them  all?  I 
could  have  posted  them  five  minutes  before  the  train 
started.  I  had  never  thought  to  that  moment  of  the 


THE   BREAKING   POINT      489 

immense  mess  they  would  be  in;  how  the  whole  edifice 
would  clatter  about  their  ears.  I  had  a  sudden  desire 
to  stop  the  train  and  go  back  for  a  day,  for  two  days, 
to  set  that  negligence  right.  My  brain  for  a  moment 
brightened,  became  animated  and  prolific  of  ideas.  I 
thought  of  a  brilliant  line  we  might  have  taken  on  that 
confounded  Reformatory  Bill.  .  .  . 

That  sort  of  thing  was  over.  .  .  . 

What  indeed  wasn't  over?  I  passed  to  a  vaguer, 
more  multitudinous  perception  of  disaster,  the  friends 
I  had  lost  already  since  Altiora  began  her  campaign, 
the  ampler  remnant  whom  now  I  must  lose.  I  thought 
of  people  I  had  been  merry  with,  people  I  had  worked 
with  and  played  with,  the  companions  of  talkative 
walks,  the  hostesses  of  houses  that  had  once  glowed 
with  welcome  for  us  both.  I  perceived  we  must  lose 
them  all.  I  saw  life  like  a  tree  in  late  autumn  that  had 
once  been  rich  and  splendid  with  friends — and  now  the 
last  brave  dears  would  be  hanging  on  doubtfully 
against  the  frosty  chill  of  facts,  twisting  and  tortured 
in  the  universal  gale  of  indignation,  trying  to  evade 
the  cold  blast  of  the  truth.  I  had  betrayed  my  party, 
my  intimate  friend,  my  wife,  the  wife  whose  devotion 
had  made  me  what  I  was.  For  awhile  the  figure  of 
Margaret,  remote,  wounded,  shamed,  dominated  my 
mind,  and  the  thought  of  my  immense  ingratitude. 
Damn  them!  they'd  take  it  out  of  her  too.  I  had  a 
feeling  that  I  wanted  to  go  straight  back  and  grip 
some  one  by  the  throat,  some  one  talking  ill  of  Mar- 
garet. They'd  blame  her  for  not  keeping  me,  for  let- 
ting things  go  so  far.  ...  I  wanted  the  whole  world 
to  know  how  fine  she  was.  I  saw  in  imagination  the 
busy,  excited  dinner  tables  at  work  upon  us  all,  rather 
pleasantly  excited,  brightly  indignant,  merciless. 

Well,  it's  the  stuff  we  are!  .  .  . 

Then  suddenly,   stabbing  me  to  the  heart,  came   a 


490      THE   NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

vision  of  Margaret's  tears  and  the  sound  of  her  voice 
saying,  "  Husband  mine !  Oh !  husband  mine !  To 
see  you  cry !  "  .  .  . 

I  came  out  of  a  cloud  of  thoughts  to  discover  the 
narrow  compartment,  with  its  feeble  lamp  overhead, 
and  our  rugs  and  hand-baggage  swaying  on  the  rack, 
and  Isabel,  very  still  in  front  of  me,  gripping  my  wilt- 
ing red  roses  tightly  in  her  bare  and  ringless  hand. 

For  a  moment  I  could  not  understand  her  attitude, 
and  then  I  perceived  she  was  sitting  bent  together  with 
her  head  averted  from  the  light  to  hide  the  tears  that 
were  streaming  down  her  face.  She  had  not  got  her 
handkerchief  out  for  fear  that  I  should  see  this,  but 
I  saw  her  tears,  dark  drops  of  tears,  upon  her 
sleeve.  .  .  . 

I  suppose  she  had  been  watching  my  expression,  di- 
vining my  thoughts. 

For  a  time  I  stared  at  her  and  was  motionless,  in 
a  sort  of  still  and  weary  amazement.  Why  had  we 
done  this  injury  to  one  another?  Why?  Then  some- 
thing stirred  within  me. 

"  Isabel!  "  I  whispered. 

She  made  no  sign. 

"  Isabel !  "  I  repeated,  and  then  crossed  over  to  her 
and  crept  closely  to  her,  put  my  arm  about  her,  and 
drew  her  wet  cheek  to  mine. 


THE  END 


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